Efficient formation pathway of methyl formate: the role of OH radicals on ice dust

TL;DR

This study demonstrates that the efficient formation of methyl formate in interstellar ice analogs occurs through OH radicals generated by water photolysis, highlighting a key pathway involving methoxymethanol.

Contribution

The paper reveals a new formation pathway for methyl formate via water photolysis and methoxymethanol, advancing understanding of chemical processes in the interstellar medium.

Findings

Efficient methyl formate formation via water photolysis at 10 K.

Identification of methoxymethanol as a precursor to methyl formate.

OH radicals from water photolysis are crucial for methyl formate synthesis.

Abstract

Three structural isomers of the C2H4O2 molecule, namely, methyl formate (MF; HCOOCH3), acetic acid (AA; CH3COOH), and glycol aldehyde (GA; HOCH2CHO), have attracted considerable attention as targets for understanding pathways towards molecular complexity in the interstellar medium (ISM). Among these isomers, MF is decisively abundant in various astronomical objects. For various formation pathways of MF, surface reactions on cosmic dust would play an important role. However, when compared to observations, the formation of MF has been found to be relatively inefficient in laboratory experiments in which methanol (CH3OH)-dominant ices were processed by ultraviolet (UV) photons and cosmic-ray analogues. Here, we show experimental results on the effective formation of MF by the photolysis of CH3OH on water ice at 10 K. We found that the key parameter leading to the efficient formation of MF is the supply of OH radicals by the photolysis of H2O, which significantly differs from CH3OH-rich experimental conditions. Moreover, using an ultra-high-sensitivity surface analysis method, we succeeded in constraining the decisive formation pathway of MF via the photolysis of methoxymethanol (MM; CH3OCH2OH), which would improve our current understanding of chemical evolution in the ISM.