“…Thus, four different types of shortlived carbocations, (a) tert-butyl (1, tertiary carbocation), (b) 2-norbornyl (2, nonclassical carbocation), (c) adamantly (3, bridgehead carbocation), and (d) benzylic (4) carbocations, were generated as intermediates in the corresponding model reaction (Figure 3). The lifetime of these carbocations ranges from nanoseconds to picoseconds, 3 as estimated previously by laser flash photolysis, azide clocks, and theoretical calculations, which we also discussed in detail in our earlier report. 25−30 We sampled the reaction aliquot at 5 min after initiating the reaction, followed by dispensing it on different surfaces and bombarding it with water microdroplets (Figure 1a).…”