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EnglishNew insights into the formation of interstellar formamide, a species of great relevance in prebiotic chemistry, are provided by electronic structure and kinetic calculations for the reaction NH2 + H2CO -> NH2CHO + H. Contrarily to what previously suggested, this reaction is essentially barrierless and can, therefore, occur under the low temperature conditions of interstellar objects thus providing a facile formation route of formamide. The rate coefficient parameters for the reaction channel leading to NH2CHO + H have been calculated to be A = 2.6x10^-12 cm^3 s^-1, beta = -2.1 and gamma = 26.9 K in the range of temperatures 10-300 K. Including these new kinetic data in a refined astrochemical model, we show that the proposed mechanism can well reproduce the abundances of formamide observed in two very different interstellar objects: the cold envelope of the Sun-like protostar IRAS16293-2422 and the molecular shock L1157-B2. Therefore, the major conclusion of this Letter is that there is no need to invoke grain-surface chemistry to explain the presence of formamide provided that its precursors, NH2 and H2CO, are available in the gas-phase.
| Titolo: | Gas phase formation of the prebiotic molecule formamide: insights from new quantum computations | |
| Autori: | ||
| Data di pubblicazione: | 2015 | |
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| Digital Object Identifier (DOI): | http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/mnrasl/slv094 | |
| Parole Chiave: | astro-ph.GA; astro-ph.GA; astro-ph.EP; astro-ph.SR; Physics - Chemical Physics | |
| Handle: | http://hdl.handle.net/11384/60677 | |
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