Ionization of Nitrogen, Oxygen, Water, and Carbon Dioxide Molecules by Near-Threshold Electron Impact

Abstract

An experimental technique for measuring the cross sections of direct and dissociative ionization of N2, O2, H2O, and CO2 molecules by electron impact in the near-threshold energy range is described. The setup used in the experiments allows mass separation of ions with a monopole mass spectrometer. It is shown that such a setup can be used to advantage in separation experiments. For incident electron energies between 7 and 35 eV, the energy dependences of the cross sections of generation of parent ions and ion fragments due to parent molecule dissociation are obtained.