DISSOCIATIVE ATTACHMENT IN HOT CH3CL - EXPERIMENT AND THEORY

The dissociative attachment (DA) cross section of hot CH3Cl has been measured in a crossed electron-molecule beam apparatus at temperatures up to 750 K and electron energies from 0-0.5 eV. The results are compared to cross sections computed using a mixed ab initio-semiempirical approach, treating CH3Cl as a quasidiatomic molecule. The theoretical treatment requires an anion potential curve in the stable region as a portion of the input data. Computations with three different basis sets show the results to be sensitive to the size of basis set from which the potential is determined. At high temperatures, the experimental DA cross sections are found to be in very good agreement with those derived from theory using the potential curve computed with the most flexible of the basis sets. At room temperature the theory suggests that the measured DA cross section is still limited by the presence of impurities. © 1995 American Institute of Physics.