Measuring the internal energies of species emitted from hypervelocity nanoprojectile impacts on surfaces using recalibrated benzylpyridinium probe ions

We present herein a framework for measuring the internal energy distributions of vibrationally excited molecular ions emitted from hypervelocity nanoprojectile impacts on organic surfaces. The experimental portion of this framework is based on the measurement of lifetime distributions of thermometer benzylpyridinium ions dissociated within a time of flight mass spectrometer. The theoretical component comprises re-evaluation of the fragmentation energetics of benzylpyridinium ions at the coupled-cluster singles and doubles with perturbative triples level. Vibrational frequencies for the ground and transition states of select molecules are reported, allowing for a full description of vibrational excitations of these molecules via Rice-Ramsperger-Kassel-Marcus unimolecular fragmentation theory. Ultimately, this approach is used to evaluate the internal energy distributions from the measured lifetime distributions. The average internal energies of benzylpyridinium ions measured from 440 keV Au-400(+4) impacts are found to be relatively low (similar to 0.24 eV/atom) when compared with keV atomic bombardment of surfaces (1-2 eV/atom). (C) 2013 AIP Publishing LLC.