Bond Rearrangement Produces Oxygen from Carbon Dioxide

We present a direct observation where fragmentation of the CO22+ dication, upon highly charged ion impact, leads to the formation of molecular oxygen. We assert that molecular bending and bond stretching modes of the dication represent the underlying mechanisms driving the generation of O2+. We conducted ab initio quantum chemistry calculations for the electronic state of the dication and found that the 5A1 state is responsible for the bond-rearrangement reaction. The branching ratios of this channel for multiple projectile beams of varying charge and velocity have been reported and are found to be independent of the projectile’s charge and velocity.