Photoionization study of water clusters by Time of Flight Mass Spectrometry (TOF-MS)

A water molecule plays a very important role in many fields of planetary life, namely, in atmospheric, biological and chemical process. Recently, particular attention has been focused on studying water clusters, which exhibit many features of condensed phase, but have finite size. Whereas a huge number of papers have been published on photoionization of mixed clusters of water with alcohols or aromatic molecules few is known about photoionization of neat water clusters. The present work presents the results of the application of laser ionization along with TOF-MS on water clusters up to 160 molecules in order to have information on the electronic states of clusters up to dimensions that can approximate the bulk phase.