Experimental evidence for glycolaldehyde and ethylene glycol formation by surface hydrogenation of CO molecules under dense molecular cloud conditions

By G. Fedoseev, H. Cuppen, S. Ioppolo, T. Lamberts, H. Linnartz. 2015

143 citations recorded by the source corpus.

This study focuses on the formation of two molecules of astrobiological importance – glycolaldehyde(HC(O)CH2OH)andethyleneglycol(H2C(OH)CH2OH)–bysurfacehydrogenation of CO molecules. Our experiments aim at simulating the CO freeze-out stage in interstellar darkcloudregions,wellbeforethermalandenergeticprocessingbecomedominant.Itisshown that along with the formation of H2CO and CH3OH – two well-established products of CO hydrogenation – also molecules with more than one carbon atom form. The key step in this process is believed to be the recombination of two HCO radicals followed by the formation of a C–C bond. The experimentally established reaction pathways are implemented into a continuous-time random-walk Monte Carlo model, previously used to model the formation of CH3OH on astrochemical time-scales, to study their impact on the solid-state abundances in dense interstellar clouds of glycolaldehyde and ethylene glycol.

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics, Atomic and Molecular Physics, and Optics, Spectroscopy

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/0160bc31dc07842611ddf0df9f76214621d9b4a3

How researchers see this paper

The researchers whose trusted networks rank it highest, strongest advocate first. Every researcher gets a different order.

In Astronomy and Astrophysics

1. R. Garrod
2. H. Cuppen
3. S. Ioppolo
4. H. Linnartz
5. C. Walsh
6. E. V. van Dishoeck
7. T. Lamberts
8. D. Semenov

In Atomic and Molecular Physics, and Optics

1. R. Garrod
2. S. Ioppolo
3. B. McGuire
4. H. Linnartz
5. E. V. van Dishoeck
6. H. Cuppen
7. T. Lamberts
8. C. Walsh

In Spectroscopy

1. R. Garrod
2. H. Cuppen
3. C. Walsh
4. S. Ioppolo
5. T. Lamberts
6. D. Semenov
7. H. Linnartz
8. E. V. van Dishoeck

Citations in the corpus

• H-atom addition and abstraction reactions in mixed CO, H2CO and CH3OH ices – an extended view on complex organic molecule formation (2016, methodology): “In the simulations reported by Fedoseev et al. (2015), high activation barriers are used for HCO and CH3O diffusion.”
• Grain Surface Models and Data for Astrochemistry (2017, methodology): “The experiments include the co-deposition of H atoms and pure H2CO, H atoms and pure CH3OH as well as H atoms and mixtures of H2CO with CO, H2CO with CH3OH, and CH3OH with CO, in fact extending previous CO hydrogenation studies (e.g., Fuchs et al. 2009; Fedoseev et al. 2015).”
• Formation of ethylene glycol and other complex organic molecules in star-forming regions (2016, background): “These chemical routes rely on theoretical chemical models (Bennett & Kaiser 2007; Garrod, Weaver & Herbst 2008; Woods et al. 2013; Balucani, Ceccarelli & Taquet 2015) and laboratory experiments (Fedoseev et al. 2015; Butscher et al. 2015).”
• 2018 Census of Interstellar, Circumstellar, Extragalactic, Protoplanetary Disk, and Exoplanetary Molecules (2018, background): “A substantial amount of laboratory (e.g., Linnartz et al. 2015 and Fedoseev et al. 2015), quantum chemical (e.g., Woon 2002), and chemical modeling (e.g., Garrod et al. 2008) work suggests that these hydrogenation processes are efficient in the ISM, often even at low temperatures.”