Fragmentation of Highly Excited Small Neutral Carbon Clusters

Abstract

We present a combined experimental and theoretical study of fragmentation of small Cn clusters (n = 5,7,9) produced in charge transfer collisions of fast (nu = 2.6 a.u.) singly charged Cn+ clusters with He. Branching ratios for all possible fragmentation channels have been measured. Comparison with microcanonical Metropolis Monte Carlo simulations based on quantum chemistry calculations allows us to determine the energy distribution of the excited clusters just after the collision.

Ionization potentials, dissociation energies and statistical fragmentation of neutral and positively charged small carbon clusters

“…To introduce all the isomers in the MMMC simulations has been shown to be crucial to correctly describe the fragmentation process [19,22] the most stable isomer for each cluster size and charge, i.e., they are adiabatic energies.…”

“…Following a similar procedure than the presented in ref. [19] we have obtained the energy distribution function shown in Fig. 6 (dashed line).…”

“…[15][16][17]19]). In these experiments they measure the branching ratios of all possible fragmentation channels.…”

“…The decay of excited small carbon clusters has been experimentally widely studied [1][2][3][4][5][6][7][8][9][10][11][12][13][14][15][16][17][18][19]. In these experiments, the loss of neutral C 3 has been found to be the dominant dissociation process for both charged and neutral clusters.…”

“…In addition, a statistical treatment of the fragmentation process has been carried out. These simulations have allowed us to have a direct comparison with recent fragmentation experiments [19] and the evaluation of energetic properties as a function of the cluster charge and size. The paper is organized as follows.…”