Electron collisions with dimethylamine and trimethylamine molecules and molecular ions

Abstract

Experiments are described in which the dissociative recombination of trimethylamine and dimethylamine ions and related product ions, was studied using a Flowing Afterglow Langmuir Probe- Mass Spectrometer (FALP-MS) apparatus. The technique used in this experiment is based on the measurement of the decay of the electron density as an afterglow plasma flows along a drift tube. The results obtained for the DR for dimethylamine and trimethylamine ions were measured using three different methods. The results for trimethylamine ions are in reasonable accord with those for other polyatomic ions while for dimethylamine ions, are unreasonably high and this was explained by the competition from electron capture by neutral dimethylamine molecules.