MERGED ELECTRON-ION BEAM EXPERIMENTS .3. TEMPERATURE-DEPENDENCE OF DISSOCIATIVE RECOMBINATION FOR ATMOSPHERIC IONS NO+, O-2(+) AND N-2(+)

Electron-molecular-ion dissociative recombination cross sections have been measured for N2+, NO+ and O2 + over the energy interval 0.007-1 eV using the merged electron-ion beam technique. As with most other molecular ions measured by us the 'direct' recombination process appears to dominate below 0.1 eV where all cross sections follow a 1/E dependence. For the ions O2+, NO+ and N2+ the derived rate coefficients at 300K are respectively 1.9, 2.3 and 3.5*10-7 cm3s-1 with a temperature dependence close to Tc-0.5.