Hydrated metal ions in the gas phase

Studying metal ion solvation, especially hydration, in the gas phase has developed into a field that is dominated by a tight interaction between experiment and theory. Since the studied species carry charge, mass spectrometry is an indispensable tool in all experiments. Whereas gas-phase coordination chemistry and reactions of bare metal ions are reasonably well understood, systems containing a larger number of solvent molecules are still difficult to understand. This review focuses on the rich chemistry of hydrated metal ions in the gas phase, covering coordination chemistry, charge separation in multiply charged systems, as well as intracluster and ion-molecule reactions. Key ideas of metal ion solvation in the gas phase are illustrated with rare-gas solvated metal ions.

Tandem time-of-flight experiment for low energy collision studies

We present an experiment adapted to collisional studies of cluster ions based on a laser vaporization setup coupled to a supersonic expansion. The ions are selected in a first time-of-flight, slowed down to the desired energy, and collided in an octopolar guide. The parent and fragment ions are then reaccelerated in order to be mass analyzed in a reflectron time-of-flight. An original method for the extraction of the ion that uses a double voltage pulse, is proposed. The experiment has been applied to collisions of hydrated cobalt ions. An absolute cross section of 17 A2 for the loss of one water molecule by Co(H2O)2+ in collision with neon at a center-of-mass energy of 10 eV, has been determined, with an accuracy of 10%. The threshold for this reaction has been measured at 1.5 eV and is in good agreement with the existing literature (Dalleska et al. J. Am. Chem. Soc. 1994, 116, 3519). Ions that cannot be formed by conventional ligand exchange methods, can also be studied. As an example, the threshold for dehydration of the Co2(H2O)+ ion has been measured at 1.5 +/- 0.2 eV.