Dynamics of the reaction of O- with H2O : Reactive and nonreactive decay of collision complexes

We present a study of reactive and nonreactive collisions between O- and H2O over the collision energy range from 0.67 to 1.07 eV. Kinetic energy analysis of the O- scattered nonreactively from H2O shows two components: The first arises from direct scattering and is nearly quasielastic, while the second occurs at significantly lower barycentric energies and corresponds to O- ejected without reaction from electrostatically bound O-·H2O complexes formed by approaching reagents. This latter flux is significantly more intense than the reactive OH- flux. The kinetic energy distributions for the low energy O- nonreactive flux are in qualitative agreement with statistical phase space theory, although recoil distributions that model the exit channel by an r -4 potential underestimate the kinetic energy release