Determination of the composition and content of pulsed cluster beams from time-of-flight mass spectra of cluster fragments

Abstract

The composition and content of pulsed neutral cluster beams are determined by a specially proposed method from ion signals of cluster fragments in time-of-flight spectra of clusters in these beams. For beams of different-size mixed clusters (SF₆)_mAr_n (where 1 ≤ m ≤ 4 and 0 ≤ n ≤ 9 are the number of molecules and atoms in clusters, respectively), it is shown that the proposed method makes it possible to determine the composition and content of neutral van der Waals molecular and atomic–molecular clusters in beams.