Seminars Archive

Solvation effects in doped water clusters

Abstract
Solvation effects play a crucial role in a number of fields in physics and chemistry. To elucidate the microscopic behaviour of the underlying dynamics, the corresponding properties of clusters are investigated as function of their size. Three different experimental results will be presented which deal with the solvated electron. The measurement of the ionization potential of Na doped ammonia clusters gave the surprising result that the extrapolation to the bulk limit does not agree with the results of the metallic solutions in liquid ammonia. The differences are explained by the various distances of the counter ions from the solvated electron. By a new double resonance scheme we extended the infrared spectroscopy of completely size selected clusters to large Na doped water clusters. Here we observe the indication of delocalized electrons. Finally, the formation of solvent-separated ion pairs and their photoreactions are investigated in photodissociation experiments of HCl and HBr on the surface of large water clusters. The results for different isotope distributions could be best explained by the existence of H3O radical.