Instrumentation

Strong fragmentation processes driven by low energy electron attachment to various small perfluoroether molecules

“…The entire two step process (1a) and (1b) is known as resonant dissociative electron attachment (DEA) [20,21] . For the present compounds a variety of such DEA reactions are apparently accessible at very low energies.…”

“…Representative members are C 6 F 6 and SF 6 which both very effectively capture electrons at energies close to zero to form a long lived parent anions which can be observed by mass spectrometry [22,23] . Their long lifetime is a result of effective transfer of electronic energy into vibrational energy thereby delaying autodetachment [20–23] . In these two compounds, on the other hand, low energy DEA channels are not accessible so that autodetachment is the only decay mechanism.…”

“…8 ). If parent anions are observed at all by free electron attachment, they are often formed at very low energies (close to zero eV) like the prototype molecules SF 6 and C 6 F 6 and other perfluorinated compounds [20–23,31] . A few reports also exist on molecules, which do form long lived parent anions off zero energy like in p-benzoquinone at 1.4 eV [32–35] , azobenzene at 0.9 and 1.2 eV [36] and pyromellitic acide amide at 1.65 eV [37] .…”