Sodium chloride clusters doped with glyoxylate serve as a model system for sea salt aerosols in the Earth's atmosphere.
Beyer lab - Reactivity and photochemistry of clusters
In the ion trap in the ultra-high vacuum of a mass spectrometer, chemical reactions take place in slow motion because only about one collision of a cluster with a molecule of a reaction gas takes place per second. This allows us to follow the course of the reaction precisely. Furthermore, we use tunable lasers to initiate photochemical reactions and to determine the structure of the clusters and their reaction products. With these methods, we investigate the behavior of sea salt aerosols in the atmosphere as well as hydrogen evolution reactions at metal ions solvated in a water cluster, gaining insight into the fundamental properties of chemical bonds.