Collision-energy-resolved Penning ionization electron spectroscopy of thiazole and benzothiazole: study of ionic states and anisotropic interactions between a metastable He(23S) atom and hetero cyclic compounds.

Anisotropic interactions between a metastable He(2(3)S) atom and aromatic heterocyclic compounds (thiazole and benzothiazole) as well as their electronic structures were studied by means of collision-energy/electron-energy resolved two-dimensional Penning ionization electron spectroscopy combined with ab initio molecular orbital calculations. Different collision-energy dependence of partial ionization cross sections (CEDPICS) were clearly observed for different ionic states depending on anisotropic extents of molecular orbitals from which an electron is removed. It was found that thiazole and benzothiazole most strongly attract a He(2(3)S) atom around the region where the nitrogen lone pair orbital extends. For another heteroatom, sulfur, it is relatively weak, but a certain attractive interaction was found for the directions perpendicular to the molecular plane. Benzothiazole was shown to widely attract a He(2(3)S) atom in the out-of-plane directions, since the benzene moiety showed a deeper potential well than the five-membered ring. Assignments of the ionic states including shake-up states were also discussed from observed CEDPICS and ab initio molecular orbital calculations. In particular, for the satellite bands, a negative collision energy dependence of the band intensity was well supported by a configuration-interaction calculation that assigns the satellite bands to be the ionization from pi orbitals accompanying pi-pi or n-pi excitations.