Electron-impact spectroscopy of small metal clusters: Inelastic collisions

Publisher Website
Google Scholar
Abstract
We have carried out a measurement of absolute interaction cross sections for inelastic collisions of electrons with free size-selected neutral sodium clusters. Electron-induced depletion of the supersonic cluster beam exhibits an increase at impact energies lower than 0.5 eV, and is essentially constant at higher energies. The inelastic interaction range, determined from the measured cross sections, increases with cluster size and is considerably greater than the cluster dimensions. The dominant physical processes are electron attachment and collision-induced fragmentation.