Evaluation of the computational methods for electron-impact total ionization cross sections: Fluoromethanes as benchmarks

摘要

The experimental electron-impact total ionization cross sections (TICSs, ICSs) of CF_4, CHF_3, CH_2F_2, and CH_3F fluoromethanes reported so far and a new set of data obtained with a linear double focusing time-of-flight mass spectrometer have been compared with the ab initio and (semi)empirical based ICS available methods. TICSs computational methods include: two approximations of the binary-encounter dipole (BED) referred to hereafter as Kim(Kim-BEB) and Khare (Khare-BEB) methods, the Deutsch and Mark (DM0 formalism, also requiring atomic and molecular ab initio information, the modified additivity rule (MAR), and the Harland and Vallance (HV) methods, both based on semiempirical or empirical correlations. The molecular ab initio information required by the Kim, Khare, and DM methods has been computed at a variety of quantum chemistry levels, with and without electron correlation and a comprehensive series of basis sets. The general conclusions are summarized as follows: the Kim method yields TICS in excellent agreement with the experimental method; the Khare method provides TICS very close to that of Kim at low electron-impact energies (< 100 eV), but their Mott and Bethe contributions are noticeably different; in the Kim and Khare approximations the electron correlation methods improve the fittings to the experimental profiles in contrast with the large basis sets, that leads to poorer results; the DM formalism yields TICS profiles with shapes similar to the experimental and the BEB methods, but consistently lower and with the profiles maxima shifted towards lower incident electron energies; the MAR method supplies very good ICS profiles, between those of BEB and DM methods; finally, the empirical HV method provides rather poor fittings concomitant with the simplicity and the few empirical parameters used.