PROBING THE CARBON-PHOSPHORUS BOND COUPLING IN LOW-TEMPERATURE PHOSPHINE (PH₃)-METHANE (CH₄) INTERSTELLAR ICE...

Phosphine, which has now been confirmed around the carbon-rich star IRC+10216, provides the first example of a phosphorus-containing single bond in interstellar or circumstellar media. While four compounds containing both phosphorus and carbon have been discovered, none contain a carbon-phosphorus single bond. Here, we show that this moiety is plausible from the reaction of phosphine with methane in electron-irradiated interstellar ice analogues. Fractional sublimation allows for detection of individual products at distinct temperatures using reflectron time-of-flight mass spectrometry (ReTOF) coupled with vacuum ultraviolet photoionization. This method produced phosphanes and methylphosphanes as large as P₈H₁₀ and CH₃P₈H₉, which demonstrates that a phosphorus-carbon bond can readily form and that methylphosphanes sublime at 12-17 K higher temperatures than the non-organic phosphanes. Also, irradiated ices of phosphine with deuterated-methane untangle the reaction pathways through which these methylphosphanes were formed and identified radical recombination to be preferred over carbene/phosphinidene insertion reactions. In addition, these ReTOF results confirm that CH₃PH₂ and CH₆P₂ can form via insertion of carbene and phosphinidene and that the methylenediphosphine (PH₂CH₂PH₂) isomer forms in the ices, although methylphosphine (CH₃P₂H₃) is likely the more abundant isomer and that phosphanes and organophosphanes preferentially fragment via the loss of a phosphino group when photoionized. While the formation of methylphosphine is overall endoergic, the intermediates produced by interactions with energetic electrons proceed toward methylphosphine favorably and barrierlessly and provide plausible mechanisms toward hitherto unidentified interstellar compounds.