Kaiser R I, Ochsenfeld C, Head-Gordon M, Lee Y T, Suits A G
Department of Chemistry, University of California, Berkeley, CA 94720, USA.
Science. 1996 Nov 29;274(5292):1508-11. doi: 10.1126/science.274.5292.1508.
The reaction of ground-state carbon atoms with acetylene was studied under single-collision conditions in crossed beam experiments to investigate the chemical dynamics of forming cyclic and linear C3H isomers (c-C3H and l-C3H, respectively) in interstellar environments via an atom-neutral reaction. Combined state-of-the-art ab initio calculations and experimental identification of the carbon-hydrogen exchange channel to both isomers classify this reaction as an important alternative to ion-molecule encounters to synthesize C3H radicals in the interstellar medium. These findings strongly correlate with astronomical observations and explain a higher [c-C3H]/[l-C3H] ratio in the dark cloud TMC-1 than in the carbon star IRC+10216.
