Determination of product abundances using broadband rotational spectroscopy of buffer gas cooled molecules desorbed from electron irradiated acetonitrile ices Travis Hager and Bernadette Broderick Department of Chemistry, University of Missouri, Columbia, Missouri, 65211, USA A new instrument combining buffer gas cooling with broadband chirped-pulse mm-wave spectroscopy is used here to study the products sublimed from electron irradiated ices. Pure acetonitrile ices, formed at 4 K, were irradiated with electrons to induce the production of various nitriles, such as hydrogen cyanide (HCN), hydrogen isocyanide (HNC), methylamine (CH 3 NH 2 ), methyl isocyanide (CH 3 NC), ketenimine (H 2 CCNH), and others. The primary motivation of this work is to utilize the isomer and conformer specificity of rotational spectroscopy to unambiguously determine the relative abundances of products formed from irradiation of astrobiologically important species contained within interstellar ices. We present the detection of these products and their ratios via temperature-programmed desorption coupled with 60 – 90 GHz broadband rotational spectroscopy.
P11
© The Author(s), 2023
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