Directed gas phase formation of silicon dioxide and implications for the formation of interstellar silicates.
basic_science · Level V
Where this comes from
- Record sourced from PubMed, PMID 29472549.
- Also identified by DOI 10.1038/s41467-018-03172-5 and PMC identifier 5823853.
- Licence recorded as CC BY.
- The licence permits redistribution, so the abstract is shown in full and the full text is available from the publisher.
Abstract
Interstellar silicates play a key role in star formation and in the origin of solar systems, but their synthetic routes have remained largely elusive so far. Here we demonstrate in a combined crossed molecular beam and computational study that silicon dioxide (SiO<sub>2</sub>) along with silicon monoxide (SiO) can be synthesized via the reaction of the silylidyne radical (SiH) with molecular oxygen (O<sub>2</sub>) under single collision conditions. This mechanism may provide a low-temperature path-in addition to high-temperature routes to silicon oxides in circumstellar envelopes-possibly enabling the formation and growth of silicates in the interstellar medium necessary to offset the fast silicate destruction.