Metastable decay and binding energies of van der Waals cluster ions

Abstract

In this work the appearance potentials for the metastable decay channel of a series of van der Waals dimer ions are presented. Ionization and metastable dissociation is achieved by resonance-enhanced two-photon absorption in a linear reflection time-of-flight mass spectrometer. From the appearance potentials the binding energy of the neutral dimers is obtained and from the additionally measured ionization potentials binding energies of the dimer cations are achieved. The contribution of charge transfer resonance interaction to the binding in cluster ions is evaluated by investigation of several homo-and heterodimers of aromatic components and the heterodimer benzene/cyclohexane as an example for a dimer consisting of an aromatic and a nonaromatic component.