Radicals and ions frequently play an important role in gaseous media such as the Interstellar Medium (ISM), the upper atmosphere, flames, plasmas, discharges etc. Reactions involving such species often dominate the chemistry in these regions. Although collisions in the ISM between ions and radicals are very rare events, the long timescales involved mean such reactions make important contributions to the pathways for assembly and destruction of complex chemical species. Unfortunately, experimental measurements of the rates and particularly the dynamics of reactions <i>between</i> ions and radicals are very few and far between. This is simply a consequence of the typical low densities of such species formed under normal laboratory conditions. In addition, most radical beam sources are not “clean” and contain a variety of other species and a range of quantum states making precise determination of reaction dynamics challenging. Our system overcomes some of these challenges by using trapped molecular ions and Stark decelerated neutral radicals. We are exploring simple chemical reactions between cold, trapped molecular ions and the neutral free radicals NO, OH, NH, and CH.

Cold controlled reactions between molecular ions and molecular radicals

252nd National Meeting (2016)

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