Dynamics of the reaction of N+ with H2. II. Reactive scattering at relative energies below 3 eV

Abstract

The reaction N+ (H2,H) NH+ has been investigated in the range of initial relative energies from 0.79 to 2.8 eV. Despite the deep potential energy well (6 eV) associated with the symmetric NH2+ molecule ion, the reaction proceeds predominately by a direct interaction mechanism at relative energies as low as 2 eV. Only when the initial relative energy is near or below 1 eV does a long−lived complex mechanism appear to predominate. This behavior can be rationalized in terms of the qualitative features of potential energy surfaces deduced for the system from an electronic state correlation diagram.