C–N bond formation in the gas phase reaction of C+ with NH3

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Abstract
We present a study of the reaction of C+ with NH3 at collision energies near 2 eV. The reaction proceeds through a long lived intermediate which is hypothesized on the basis of ab initio calculations to be the nonclassical cation HCNH+2 produced by insertion of C+ into the N–H bond. Mass 28 production appears to proceed through a substantial exit channel barrier, suggesting that N–H bond cleavage in the intermediate complex yields HCNH+, hypothesized to be important in interstellar synthesis of large molecules. The recoil distribution is significantly broader than the predictions of phase space theory. Mass 27 production yields a recoil distribution which is also broader than predicted by a statistical theory and which appears to be a superposition of two channels releasing different amounts of kinetic energy. We hypothesize that the intermediate complex decays by (1,1) geminal elimination of H2 to yield HCN+, while HNC+ is also produced by (1,2) vicinal elimination from the same intermediate.

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