Electron-impact dissociative ionisation of the CCl4 molecule

Absolute partial and total ionisation cross-sections, nascent ions kinetic energy distributions and the appearance energies of the product ions has been measured for the product ions produced by electron-impact on the CCl4 molecule, namely CCl3+, CCl2+, CCl+, Cl2+, Cl+, C+ and CCl32+ ions. The experiments were conducted by crossing a pulsed beam of tuneable energy electrons up to 100 and 0.5 eV (full with at half maximum) energy spread with a supersonic beam of CCl4 in buffer Ar within the active region of a time-of-flight mass spectrometer. The total ionisation cross-section profile was calculated by adding the partial ionisation cross-section profiles. Both total and partial ionisation cross-sections are compared with previously reported theoretical and experimental results, analysing agreements and discrepancies. Appearance energies are also reported and combined with the nascent kinetic energy distributions lead to the identification of the fragmentation pathways.