Cross Sections for Electron Collisions with NO, N2O, and NO2

Abstract

Cross section data are compiled from the literature for electron collisions with oxides of nitrogen (N x O y ) molecules: the species nitric oxide (NO), nitrous oxide (N 2 O) and nitrogen dioxide (NO 2 ) are explicitly considered. Cross sections are collected and reviewed for total scattering, elastic scattering, momentum transfer, excitations of rotational, vibrational and electronic states, dissociation, ionization, and dissociative attachment. For each of these processes, the recommended values of the cross sections are presented. The literature has been surveyed up to the end of 2017. These results are supplemented by a re-analysis of the swarm measurements for NO and new calculated cross sections for rotational excitation of N 2 O, and for rotational excitation and electronic excitation of NO 2 .

“Recommended” cross sections for electron collisions with molecules

“…Similar calculations for NF 3 (for five rotational transitions) (see [41]), showed clearly the resonant state at about 2 eV. This is also the case of the shape resonance in N 2 O, well pronounced in the rotation-elastic channel, for all j = 1 → j = 1 − 5 transitions (see [39]). In contrast, no resonance appears in the same channels in NO 2 between 0.2 and 3 eV, even though an alternative calculation [81] claimed two sharp resonances in the elastic cross section.…”

“…The IEECS derived from measurements of transport coefficients [39,73] show identical energy dependence (see Fig. 8), but are a few times higher.…”

“…The present group, defined by the authors of this paper, was born out of the data needs of models of fusion edge plasmas for the ITER experiment, so our first papers were dedicated to hydrocarbons [37,38]. However our more recent compilations include atmospheric species [39,40] and gases with potential industrial applications, like NF 3 [41]. The expertise in the group is deliberately mixed consisting of theory, beam and swarm experiments and plasma applications.…”

Vibrationally resolved NO dissociative excitation cross sections by electron impact

“…Generated in atmospheric plasma from chemical reactions of nitrogen with oxygen, NO and its radicals are very important in many industrial technologies [1][2][3][4][5] and play a key role in the combustion of fossil fuels [6,7]. Of the nitrogen oxide compounds, the so-called NOx gasses, the NO molecule has the greater impact on environment and on pollution caused by human activities [8,9].In order to make kinetic plasma models involving nitric oxide, many sets of molecular data [10][11][12], spectroscopic properties [13][14][15] and reaction rate coefficients [16][17][18][19] are available in the literature but, in spite of its importance, none of them provide complete data on electron impact dissociation. More specifically, rate constants for electron-NO reactions, both theoretical [14,[20][21][22] and experimental [23][24][25][26][27], exist only for vibrational excitation and dissociative electron attachment processes at low-energy.…”

“…More specifically, rate constants for electron-NO reactions, both theoretical [14,[20][21][22] and experimental [23][24][25][26][27], exist only for vibrational excitation and dissociative electron attachment processes at low-energy. A recent compilation of all the known electron collision cross sections is given by Song et al [16].To fill this gap, we present calculations -based on the formalism used previously [20] -of vibrational state resolved cross sections and the corresponding rate coefficients for dissociative excitation (DE) of NO by electron impact, i.e. :We consider electron collision energies where numerous NO − resonances exist, direct dissociation is negligible and the DE reaction is dominated by resonant processes [28,29].…”