Dissociation of CO induced by ions: I. Fragmentation and kinetic energy release spectra

The dissociation of ions produced in collisions of ions with CO has been studied by time-of-flight measurements. Both singles and coincidence time-of-flight techniques have been used to determine the kinetic energy release of the dissociating CO molecules. We describe the method to transform the singles and coincidence time-of-flight spectra into total kinetic energy distributions and discuss these distributions. They represent kinetic energy release distributions which clearly exhibit various contributions associated with different dissociation channels. In comparison with other ionization methods similarities but also clear differences are noted.