Abstract
SOME years ago, Bates and Massey1, after showing the influence of negative ion reactions to be unimportant, suggested that dissociative recombination is the fundamental process responsible for removing electrons from the E-Layer; and later they2 suggested that the mechanism might also be effective in the D-layer. Recent experimental3 and theoretical4 work indicates that the recombination coefficient is probably of the required high magnitude. The F-layers are at least partially, and perhaps mainly, due to the photo-ionization of atomic oxygen, so it is not immediately obvious that dissociative recombination can be operative in them. However, Bates and Massey1 tentatively proposed that the necessary molecular ions are formed through charge transfer collisions: 
XY being some unspecified atmospheric constituent.
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References
Bates, D. R., and Massey, H. S. W., Proc. Roy. Soc., A, 192, 1 (1947).
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Banerji, R. B., Nature, 172, 953 (1953).
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Bates, D. R., and Witherspoon, A. E., Mon. Not. Roy. Astro. Soc., 112, 101 (1952).
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STEWART, A. Recombination in the F-Layers. Nature 173, 165 (1954). https://doi.org/10.1038/173165a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/173165a0
