An electron-swarm mass-spectrometric study of electron attachment to thiophenol and its anion–molecule reactions

Electron attachment to ground-state thiophenol, C6H5SH, has been studied using an ion-mobility mass spectrometer. Mean electron energies from about 1.23 eV up to about 1.46 eV were covered using an atmospheric-pressure argon buffer gas and various density-reduced electric field strengths, E/N, from 2.48 up to 3.55×10−18 V cm2 in a drift chamber. It was found that thiophenol attaches low-energy electrons only dissociatively and three fragment anions were observed: CH2S−, C2H5S− and C6H5S−. These findings are discussed.