Cooling-induced increase of methane cluster size investigated under a Coulomb explosion scheme

Abstract

In this letter, we discuss the increase in the average cluster size by lowering the stagnation temperature of the methane (CH4) gas. The Coulomb explosion experiments are conducted to estimate the cluster size and the size distribution. The average CH4 cluster sizes Nav of 6 230 and 6 580 are acquired with the source conditions of 30 bars at 240 K and 60 bars at 296 K, respectively. Empirical estimation suggests a five-fold increase in the average size of the CH4 clusters at 240 K compared with that at room temperature under a backing pressure of 30 bars. A strong nonlinear Hagena parameter relation (\Gamma *\propto T^{-3.3}) for the CH4 clusters is revealed. The results may be favorable for the production of large-sized clusters by using gases at low temperature and high back pressures.