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. 2019 Dec;30(12):2632-2636.
doi: 10.1007/s13361-019-02329-w. Epub 2019 Oct 24.

Protonated Clusters of Neon and Krypton

Michael Gatchell  1   2 , Paul Martini  3 , Arne Schiller  3 , Paul Scheier  3
Affiliations

Protonated Clusters of Neon and Krypton

Michael Gatchell et al. J Am Soc Mass Spectrom. 2019 Dec.

Abstract

We present a study of cationic and protonated clusters of neon and krypton. Recent studies using argon have shown that protonated rare gas clusters can have very different magic sizes than pure, cationic clusters. Here, we find that neon behaves similarly to argon, but that the cationic krypton is more similar to its protonated counterparts than the lighter rare gases are, sharing many of the same magic numbers.

Keywords: Helium nanodroplets; Protonated rare gas clusters; Rare gas clusters.

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Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
Mass spectra for positively charged products after helium nanodroplets doped with Ne and H2 (top left) or Kr and D2 (bottom left) are ionized by 78 eV electrons. Cluster series for the pure and protonated rare gases are clearly visible up to sizes of 50 atoms. The right panel is a zoom-in of the Kr13 region showing the large number of individual peaks that arise from the isotopic pattern of Kr. Here we also show the fitted distributions of the main complexes in this mass window. The KrnD3 series (potentially also containing contributions from KrnHeD+) is included to better constrain the contribution from KrnD+ but is beyond the focus of this work
Figure 2
Figure 2
Extracted intensities of Nen+, NenH+, Krn+, and KrnD+ clusters from our measurements. Values for Arn+ and ArnH+ are from ref. [7]. Statistical errors from the measurements and fitted cluster distributions are indicated by the black bars
Figure 3
Figure 3
Second differences calculated from the measured cluster intensities. The values are normalized to the largest absolute value and the statistical uncertainties are given by the black bars
Figure 4
Figure 4
Structure of Ne7H+ calculated at MP2(full)/def2-SVPP level of theory. This structure is common to all protonated rare gas clusters and it is a magic size for each. The central Ne-H+-Ne core is surrounded by a pentagon of Ne atoms, with their common plane passing through the proton. Thin connecting lines are used to highlight the external structure of the cluster. The coordinates for this structure are given in the electronic supplementary material
Figure 5
Figure 5
Side views (perpendicular to symmetry axes) of the structures of neutral, cationic, and protonated clusters of neon and krypton containing 19 rare gas atoms calculated at MP2(full)/def2-SVPP level of theory. Thin connecting lines are used to highlight the external structures of the clusters. The coordinates for these structures are given in the electronic supplementary material
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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