Rotamers and Migration: Investigating the Dissociative Photoionization of Ethylenediamine

The unimolecular dissociation of energy-selected ethylenediamine cations was studied by threshold photoelectron photoion coincidence spectroscopy (TPEPICO) in the photon energy range of 8.60-12.50 eV. Modeling the breakdown diagram and time-of-flight distributions with rigid activated complex RRKM theory yielded 0 K appearance energies for eight dissociation channels, leading to NH2CHCH2(+)(•) at 9.120 ± 0.010 eV, CH3C(NH2)2(+) at 9.200 ± 0.012 eV, NH2CHCH3(+) at 9.34 ± 0.08 eV, CH2NH2(+) at 9.449 ± 0.025 eV, CH2NH3(+) at 9.8 ± 0.1 eV, c-C2H4NH2(+) at 10.1 ± 0.1 eV, CH3NHCHCH2(+) at 10.2 ± 0.1 eV, and the reappearance of CH2NH2(+) at 10.2 ± 0.1 eV. The CBS-QB3-calculated pathways highlighted the influence of intramolecular hydrogen attractions on the dissociation processes, presenting novel isomers and low-energy van der Waals intermediates that led to fragments in good agreement with experimental results. While most of the dissociation channels take place through reverse barriers, the 0 K heat of formation of (•)CH2NH2 was determined to be 147.6 ± 3.7 kJ mol(-1), in excellent agreement with literature, and the 0 K heat of formation of CH2NH3(+) at 844 ± 10 kJ mol(-1) is the first experimentally measured value available and is in good agreement with theory.