Mass spectrometric and charge density studies of organometallic clusters photoionized by gigawatt laser pulses

Clusters on exposure to nanosecond laser pulses of gigawatt intensity exhibit a variety of photo‐chemical processes such as fragmentation, intracluster reaction, ionization, Coulomb explosion, etc. Present article summarizes the experimental results obtained in our laboratory utilizing time‐of‐flight mass spectrometer which deal with one such aspect of cluster photochemistry related to generation of multiply charged atomic ions upon excessive ionization of cluster constituents (Coulomb explosion) at low intensity laser field (∼109 W/cm2). To understand the mechanism of laser–cluster interaction, laser as well as cluster parameters were varied. Mass spectrometric studies were carried out at different laser wavelength as well as varying the nature of cluster constituents, backup pressure, nozzle diameter, etc. In addition, charge density measurements were also preformed to get information about the total number of ions generated upon laser–cluster interaction as a function of laser wavelength. In case of pure molecular clusters, the charge state of atomic ions as well as charge density was observed to enhance with increasing laser wavelength, signifying efficient coupling of the cluster medium with nanosecond laser pulse at longer wavelength. While in case of clusters doped with species having comparatively lower ionization energy, the efficiency of laser–cluster interaction was less, in contrast to studies carried out using femtosecond lasers. Results obtained in the present work have been rationalized on the basis of proposed three‐stage cluster ionization mechanism, that is, multiphoton ionization ignited‐inverse Bremsstrahlung heating and electron ionization. © 2015 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Mass Spec Rev. 36:188–212, 2017