Adiabatic unimolecular dissociation of heterogeneous alkali clusters

Abstract

The unimolecular dissociation of metastable photoionized mass-selected heterogeneous alkali clusters is investigated using a tandem time-of-flight spectrometer. NaK+n and Nan K+ are found to dissociate by evaporation of either a single neutral atom or a neutral dimer of the most abundant constituant. This behavior differs from the evaporation of heterogeneous neutral clusters which might always evaporate potassium in order to explain the sodium enrichment in the NaxKy neutral cluster distributions. This difference in the dissociation patterns of neutral and ionic heterogeneous clusters puts into evidence the influence of the charge in unimolecular dissociation processes.