Metastable Evaporation of Molecules from Water Clusters.

ABSTRACT: We probe the stability of water clusters by means of their metastable decay probability extracted from two-dimensional reflectron time-of-flight mass spectra. Two different methods are used to ionize and potentially excite the clusters and trigger the evaporation: (i) attachment of electrons with near-zero energies, producing negatively charged (H2O)n- clusters, and (ii) electron impact ionization, producing protonated (H₂O)_nH⁺ clusters. The electron attachment is a soft ionization and therefore provides information about the size distribution of the neutral clusters in the beam due to a very limited amount of post-ionization loss of water molecules. A dependence of metastable fractions on the conditions of neutral clusters production prior to the el

SUBMITTER: Poterya V 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC11648104 | biostudies-literature | 2024 Oct

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature