Modeling collision energy transfer in APCl/CID mass spectra of PAHs using thermal-like post-collision internal energy distributions

The internal energy transferred when projectile molecular ions of naphthalene collide with argon gas atoms was extracted from the APCI-CID (atmospheric-pressure chemical ionization collision induced dissociation) mass spectra acquired as a function of collision energy. Ion abundances were calculated by microcanonical integration of the differential rate equations using the Rice-Ramsperger-Kassel-Marcus rate constants derived from a UB3LYP/6-311G+(3dE2p)//UB3LYP/6-310(d) fragmentation mechanism and thermal-like vibrational energy distributions p(M) (E, T-char). The mean vibrational energy excess of the ions was characterized by the parameter T-char (characteristic temperature), determined by fitting the theoretical ion abundances to the experimental breakdown graph (a plot of relative abundances of the ions as a function of kinetic energy) of activated naphthalene ions. According to these results, the APCI ion source produces species below T-char = 1457 K, corresponding to 3.26 eV above the vibrational ground state. Subsequent collisions heat the ions up further, giving rise to a sigmoid curve of Tchar as a function of E-com (center-of-mass-frame kinetic energy). The differential internal energy absorption per kinetic energy unit (dE(vib)/dE(com)) changes with E-com according to a symmetric bell-shaped function with a maximum at 6.38 +/- 0.32 eV (corresponding to 6.51 +/- 0.27 eV of vibrational energy excess), and a half-height full width of 6.30 +/- 1.15 eV. This function imposes restrictions on the amount of energy that can be transferred by collisions, such that a maximum is reached as kinetic energy is increased. This behavior suggests that the collisional energy transfer exhibits a pronounced increase around some specific value of energy. Finally, the model is tested against the CID mass spectra of anthracene and pyrene ions and the corresponding results are discussed. Published by AIP Publishing.