Dissociative attachment of low-energy electrons to acetonitrile.

We experimentally probed the low-energy electron-induced dissociation of acetonitrile and acetonitrile- d 3 and performed density functional theory calculations to support the experimental results. The previous studies on electron attachment to acetonitrile presented a number of contradictory findings, which we aimed to resolve in the present study. We observed the formation of H - , CH 2 - , CH 3 - , CN - , CCN - , CHCN - and CH 2 CN - anions and the corresponding deuterated fragments for acetonitrile- d 3 by dissociative electron attachment, and measured ion yields curves of each fragment. We saw no evidence for associative electron attachment to form the parent ion in these measurements. We also have measured the kinetic energy and angular distribution of selected fragments using a velocity map imaging (VMI) spectrometer. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]