Jonas Warneke, Ziyan Wang, Petra Swiderek and Jan HendrikBredehöft.
Angewandte Chemie International Edition (2015) 54, 4397-4400.
Electron-induced reactions in condensed mixtures of ethylene and water lead to the synthesis of ethanol, as shown by post-irradiation thermal desorption spectrometry (TDS). Interestingly, this synthesis is not only induced by soft electron impact ionization similar to a previously observed electron-induced hydroamination but also, at low electron energy, by electron attachment to ethylene and a subsequent acid/base reaction with water.