Abstract
Molecular dications are doubly charged cations of importance in flames, plasma chemistry and physics and in the chemistry of the upper atmosphere of Planets. Furthermore, they are exotic species able to store a considerable amount of energy at a molecular level. This high energy content of several eV can be easily released as translational energy of the two fragment monocations generated by their Coulomb explosion. For such a reason, they were proposed as a new kind of alternative propellant. The present topic review paper reports on an overview of the main contributions made by the authors’ research groups in the generation and characterization of simple molecular dications during the last 40 years of coupling experimental and theoretical efforts.
Highlights
Dications are doubly positive charged atomic or molecular ions
An interesting review paper was published highlighting the role of dications in the upper atmosphere of planets [7], indicating the possibility for such ionic species to be involved in the escape processes by Coulomb explosion [8,9]
For an overview of the main characteristics and on the importance of molecular dications, the reader can refer to the relevant review papers by Herman [10], Sabzyan et al [11] and Price et al [12]
Summary
Dications are doubly positive charged atomic or molecular ions. They are formed whenever a chemical system has a high amount of energy available, as for example in flames, and we can find them in low concentrations in many natural plasmas such as planetary ionospheres, interstellar clouds and comet tails [1,2,3]. From Equation (1), it is easy to verify that negative values of ∆ lead to the A2+ + B potential energy curve lying below A+ + B+ , indicating the thermodynamic stability of AB2+ (see Figure 1a). Small positive values of Δ may correspond to either cases, 2+ (see Figure 1b). 2+ diatomic molecular dications: (a) the case of Figure 1
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