Mixed cationic clusters of nitrogen and hydrogen

P. Martini; F. Hechenberger; M. Goulart; J. Zelger; P. Scheier; M. Gatchell

doi:10.1063/1.5140850

paper

Mixed cationic clusters of nitrogen and hydrogen

arXiv:1912.00754 · doi:10.1063/1.5140850

Abstract

The addition of small impurities, such as a single proton charge carrier, in noble gas clusters has recently been shown to have considerable effects on their geometries and stabilities. Here we report on a mass spectrometric study of cationic clusters of N $_{2}$ molecules and the effects that adding hydrogen, in the form of D $_{2}$ , has on the systems. Protonated nitrogen clusters formed by the breakup of D $_{2}$ are shown to have similar behaviors as protonated rare gas clusters. For larger systems consisting of different mixtures of intact N $_{2}$ and D $_{2}$ , the different molecular species are found to sometimes be interchangeable with regards to magic numbers. This is especially true for the (N $_{2}$ ) $_{n}$ (D $_{2}$ ) $_{m}$ D $^{+}$ systems with $n + m = 17$ , which is particularly abundant for all measured combinations of $n$ and $m$ .

19 pages, 7 figures, published in The Journal of Chemical Physics