Dissociation of gaseous zwitterion glycine-betaine by slow electrons

In this work, we investigate dissociation processes induced by low-energy electrons to gas phase N,N,N-trimethylglycine [glycine-betaine, (CH(3))(3)N(+)CH(2)COO(-)] molecules. Glycine-betaine represents a model system for zwitterions. All negative fragments are observed to be produced only at subelectronic excitation energies (< 4 eV). With the exception of the loss of a neutral H atom that could arise from any C-H bond breaking, we tentatively suggest that the zwitterion dissociates exclusively from the fragmentation of the cation site of the molecule, subsequent to the attachment of the excess electron. Within the context of radiation induced damage to biological systems, the present findings contribute to a more complete description of the fragmentation mechanism occurring to amino acids, peptides, and proteins since they adopt usually a zwitterion structure. (C) 2010 American Institute of Physics. [doi: 10.1063/1.3436718]