Laser-Induced Dissociation of the Monolayer of Adsorbed Methanol Molecules

Abstract—

Astronomical observations indicate a high abundance of methanol molecules in the gas phase of molecular-cloud dense cores, which cannot be explained by gas-phase chemical reactions only. A significant contribution to the methanol abundance should be provided by chemical reactions on the dust particle surface with subsequent desorption of the produced molecules into the gas phase. For the development and refinement of models involving these processes, laboratory studies of photo-induced processes occurring in the adsorbed material are necessary. In this paper, the experiment results of adsorbed methanol molecules are presented. A methanol molecule monolayer, physically adsorbed on fused silica surface cooled by liquid nitrogen (Т ∼ 100 K), was irradiated in high vacuum by nanosecond pulses of an excimer KrF laser with a fixed wavelength λ = 248 nm. The photodissociation products of three-photon laser excitation were recorded by a quadrupole mass spectrometer. Relative yields of photofragments H, OH, and CH₃ were determined. Photolysis of partially deuterated CH₃OH molecules has shown that hydrogen atoms can be ejected both from hydroxyl and methyl groups. In contrast to the isolated molecule photolysis in the gas phase and dissociation of the multilayer molecular coatings, photoexcitation of adsorbed methanol monolayer even in the energy region of 10 eV does not cause noticeable chemical transformations and does not lead to the formation of molecular components H₂ and CH₄. Due to existing astrochemical modeling problems, possible application methods of the obtained laboratory results are considered.