The interstellar gas-phase chemistry of HCN and HNC
  We review the reactions involving HCN and HNC in dark molecular clouds to
elucidate new chemical sources and sinks of these isomers. We find that the
most important reactions for the HCN-HNC system are Dissociative Recombination
(DR) reactions of HCNH+ (HCNH+ + e-), the ionic CN + H3+, HCN + C+, HCN and HNC
reactions with H+/He+/H3+/H3O+/HCO+, the N + CH2 reaction and two new
reactions: H + CCN and C + HNC. We test the effect of the new rate constants
and branching ratios on the predictions of gas-grain chemical models for dark
cloud conditions. The rapid C + HNC reaction keeps the HCN/HNC ratio
significantly above one as long as the carbon atom abundance remains high.
However, the reaction of HCN with H3+ followed by DR of HCNH+ acts to isomerize
HCN into HNC when carbon atoms and CO are depleted leading to a HCN/HNC ratio
close to or slightly greater than 1. This agrees well with observations in
TMC-1 and L134N taking into consideration the overestimation of HNC abundances
through the use of the same rotational excitation rate constants for HNC as for
HCN in many radiative transfer models.
