Experimental and computational studies of the formation mechanism of protonated interstellar diazines

Abstract

Studies of interstellar chemistry have grown in number and complexity by both observations and laboratory measurements, and nitrogen-containing aromatics have been implicated as important interstellar molecules. In this paper, the gas-phase collision induced dissociation (CID) processes of protonated pyridazine (1,2-diazine), pyrimidine (1,3-diazine), and pyrazine (1,4-diazine) cations (C4H5N2+) are investigated in detail both experimentally and theoretically. The major neutral loss for all three CID processes is HCN, leading to the formation of C3H4N+ isomers; our density functional theory (DFT) calculations support and elucidate our experimental results. The formation of C3H4N+ isomers from the reaction of abundant interstellar acrylonitrile (CH2CHCN) and H+is also studied employing DFT calculations. Our results lead to a novel mechanism for interstellar protonated diazine formation from the consecutive reactions of CH2CHCN+ H+ + HCN. Moreover, our results motivate the continuing search for interstellar C3H4N+ isomers as well as polycyclic aromatic N-containing hydrocarbons (PANHs).