Story of two CO2+ cations

Abstract

The classical understanding of charge transfer between a dication and its neutral counterpart would predict the formation of two singly charged species with statistical energy distribution. For the reaction of CO2 ++ with CO2 it would be thus expected that in a collision event, both emerging singly charged ions CO2 + "forget" about their electronic origin and will be indistinguishable. We have, however, found that this simple picture does not work and upon the collision both generated singly charged ions "remember" their origin and carry off a different internal-energy content. Accordingly, the cations show very different abundance of their subsequent fragmentation. It will be shown that the unsymmetrical energy distribution between the reactants is a consequence of the formation of an elusive C2O4 ++ intermediate