A study of the unimolecular decomposition of internal-energy-selected furan molecular ions by threshold-photoelectron–photoion coincidence spectroscopy Original Research Article

The unimolecular decomposition of internal-energy-selected furan molecular ions has been studied by means of threshold-photoelectron–photoion coincidence spectroscopy. Monochromatic synchrotron radiation was used as the ionisation source, and the molecular ion internal energy was established through the detection of a threshold electron. A pulsed electric field was applied to extract the ions from the interaction region and direct them towards a time-of-flight mass spectrometer. Breakdown curves were measured for photon energies up to 30 eV, and these have allowed appearance energies for a wide range of fragment ions to be determined. In the threshold region the breakdown curves have been measured for various ion residence times by introducing electronic delays between the detection of the threshold electron and the application of the ion extraction field. The breakdown curves have been modelled using the RRKM (Rice, Ramsperger, Kassel and Marcus)/QET (quasi-equilibrium theory) approach, and this has allowed activation energies and transition state geometries to be deduced.