Hydrogen elimination from carbon-silicon ion molecule reaction intermediates

A detailed analysis of the isotopic distribution of the SiCX4+ product from the reactions SiH2++CD4 and SiD2++CH4 shows that the product distribution is clearly nonrandom and that X2 elimination from the silicon atom is favored by more than an order of magnitude over elimination from any other site. It is suggested that the observed selectivity may be related to the fact that silicon is the initial ionic center in both reactions studied.