Regular Article

Interaction of anionic tin clusters Sn_n⁻, n = 7 − 75 with electrons – polyanion production and cluster decay^★

Institute of Physics, University of Greifswald, Greifswald, Germany

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Received: 4 April 2018
Received in final form: 11 July 2018
Published online: 11 September 2018

Abstract

Size-selected monoanionic tin clusters Sn_n⁻, n = 7 − 75, are stored simultaneously with electrons in a Penning trap to produce poly-anionic clusters by electron attachment. In addition to doubly and triply charged clusters with the size of the precursors, fragments such as Sn⁻_n−7, Sn⁻_n−10 or Sn_n−15 are observed in the lower size range (n ≲ 50). The latter come along with the clusters Sn⁻₁₀ and Sn⁻₁₅, probably due to fission of doubly charged clusters as in the case of the group-14 neighbor-element lead [König et al., Phys. Rev. Lett. 120, 163001 (2018)]. Furthermore, prominent doubly charged products Sn²⁻_n−15 seem to be produced by break-off of neutral decamers, a feature not yet observed for any other dianionic cluster. In addition, while almost no monomer evaporation is observed for singly charged clusters, this process does occur for doubly charged ones.