Mixed cationic clusters of nitrogen and hydrogen

Abstract

The addition of small impurities, such as a single proton charge carrier, in noble gas clusters has recently been shown to have considerable effects on their geometries and stabilities. Here we report on a mass spectrometric study of cationic clusters of N 2 molecules and the effects that adding hydrogen, in the form of D 2 , has on the systems. Protonated nitrogen clusters formed by the breakup of D 2 are shown to have similar behaviors as protonated rare gas clusters. For larger systems consisting of different mixtures of intact N 2 and D 2 , the different molecular species are found to sometimes be interchangeable with regards to magic numbers. This is especially true for the (N 2 ) n (D 2 ) m D + systems with n + m = 17, which is particularly abundant for all measured combinations of n and m.

Helium Droplet Mass Spectrometry

“…While no further studies of the heaviest rare gases xenon and radon were conducted due to the increasingly difficult analysis of the very rich isotopic pattern of Xe and the radioactivity of Rn, respectively, Martini and co-workers studied a different vander-Waals system, namely mixed cationic clusters of nitrogen and deuterium [223]. Again, the high resolution of the ToF-MS is crucial in the identification of the myriad ions such as (N 2 ) n + , (N 2 ) n D m + , He n D m + and D m + .…”