van der Burgt, Peter J.M. and McConkey, J.W. (1995) Detection of neutral metastable fragments from electron-impact on argon clusters. Journal of Chemical Physics, 102. pp. 8414-8423. ISSN 0021-9606

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Abstract

We have studied the production of neutral metastable fragments in electron collisions with neutral argon clusters. The fragments are detected using a time-of-flight technique. The time-of-flight spectra show that the metastable fragments appear in two velocity ranges. Kinetic energy distributions are obtained, showing that the faster fragments are ejected with energies from 0.2 to 1.5 eV and that the slower fragments have energies less than 0.2 eV. It is argued that the fragmentation of the clusters involves the excitation and decay of excitons in the clusters.The faster fragments are produced by n52 excitons, which localize on an excimer or an excited trimer within the cluster and upon dissociation cause the ejection of a metastable atom. The slower fragments are produced by n51 excitons, which tend to localize on the periphery of the cluster, leading to the ejection of a metastable atom due to weak repulsive forces with neighboring atoms. Four different production mechanisms for neutral metastable fragments are observed.

Item Type:	Article
Keywords:	argon; atomic clusters; molecular clusters; molecular fragments; metastable states; detection; time-of-flight method; spectra; kinetic energy; distribution; excitation; exitons; dissociation
Academic Unit:	Faculty of Science and Engineering > Experimental Physics
Item ID:	2088
Depositing User:	Dr Peter van der Burgt
Date Deposited:	17 Aug 2010 15:37
Journal or Publication Title:	Journal of Chemical Physics
Publisher:	American Institute of Physics
Refereed:	Yes
URI:
Use Licence:	This item is available under a Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial Share Alike Licence (CC BY-NC-SA). Details of this licence are available here

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