Efficient formation of formaldehyde and methanol by the addition of hydrogen atoms to CO in H2O-CO ice at 10 K

Formaldehyde and methanol were produced efficiently by the hydrogenation of CO in H2O-CO ice at 10 K in an atomic hydrogen beam experiment. The relative yields to the initial CO were of the order of 10%, 3 orders of magnitude larger than those reported previously. This reveals for the first time experimentally that successive hydrogenation of CO is most likely to produce formaldehyde and methanol on the surface of icy grains in molecular clouds as suggested by theoretical models.