Roadmap on dynamics of molecules and clusters in the gas phase

status: publishe

Roadmap on dynamics of molecules and clusters in the gas phase

This roadmap article highlights recent advances, challenges and future prospects in studies of the dynamics of molecules and clusters in the gas phase. It comprises nineteen contributions by scientists with leading expertise in complementary experimental and theoretical techniques to probe the dynamics on timescales spanning twenty order of magnitudes, from attoseconds to minutes and beyond, and for systems ranging in complexity from the smallest (diatomic) molecules to clusters and nanoparticles. Combining some of these techniques opens up new avenues to unravel hitherto unexplored reaction pathways and mechanisms, and to establish their significance in, e.g. radiotherapy and radiation damage on the nanoscale, astrophysics, astrochemistry and atmospheric science

Interaction of electrons with biologically relevant molecules

Recent years have witnessed an increase of the interest in the studies of the interaction of electrons with biologically relevant molecules. This has been mainly motivated by the seminal work, where it has been demonstrated that low energy electrons can induce single and double strand breaks in DNA in the energy range below the level of ionization. Since the damage profile as a function of electron energy showed pronounced resonances it was proposed that resonant electron capture could occur at particular molecular components of the DNA as the initial step towards strand breaks. From a series of experiments on electron attachment to DNA building blocks (nucleobases, the sugar moiety and the phosphate unit) became obvious that they effectively capture electrons leading to the formation of low energy resonances associated with the decomposition of the corresponding molecule. Recent dissociative electron attachment experiments on an entire gas phase nucleotide 2’-deoxycytidine-5´-monophosphate give also insight into the molecular mechanism involved, which comprises both direct electron attachment to the backbone and transfer of the excess electron from cytosine to the backbone resulting in single strand breaks. The results further allow an estimate of the relative contribution of these different mechanisms to single strand breaks

Unusual temperature dependence of the dissociative electron attachment cross section of 2-thiouracil

International audienceAt low energies (<3 eV), molecular dissociation is controlled by dissociative electron attachment for which the initial step, i.e., the formation of the transient negative ion, can be initiated by shape resonance or vibrational Feshbach resonance (VFR) mediated by the formation of a dipole bound anion. The temperature dependence for shape-resonances is well established; however, no experimental information is available yet on the second mechanism. Here, we show that the dissociation cross section for VFRs mediated by the formation of a dipole bound anion decreases as a function of a temperature. The change remains, however, relatively small in the temperature range of 370-440 K but it might be more pronounced at the extended temperature range