Unimolecular Coulombic fission in doubly charged alkali-metal clusters

Fission of multiply charged alkali clusters in helium droplets - approaching the Rayleigh limit

Electron ionization of helium droplets doped with sodium, potassium or cesium results in doubly and, for cesium, triply charged cluster ions. The smallest observable doubly charged clusters are Na9(2+), K11(2+), and Cs9(2+); they are a factor two to three smaller than reported previously. The size of sodium and potassium dications approaches the Rayleigh limit nRay for which the fission barrier is calculated to vanish, i.e. their fissilities are close to 1. Cesium dications are even smaller than nRay, implying that their fissilities have been significantly overestimated. Triply charged cesium clusters as small as Cs19(3+) are observed; they are a factor 2.6 smaller than previously reported. Mechanisms that may be responsible for enhanced formation of clusters with high fissilities are discussed.

The 'sticky business' of cleaning gas-phase membrane proteins: a detergent oriented perspective

In recent years the properties of gas-phase detergent clusters have come under close scrutiny due in part to their participation in the analysis of intact membrane protein complexes by mass spectrometry. The detergent molecules that cover the protein complex are removed in the gas-phase by thermally agitating the ions by collision-induced dissociation. This process however, is not readily controlled and can frequently result in the disruption of protein structure. Improved methods of releasing proteins from detergent clusters are clearly required. To facilitate this the structural properties of detergent clusters along with the mechanistic details of their dissociation need to be understood. Pivotal to understanding the properties of gas-phase detergent clusters is the technique of ion mobility mass spectrometry. This technique can be used to assign polydisperse detergent clusters and provide information about their geometries and packing densities. In this article we consider the shapes of detergent clusters and show that these clusters possess geometries that are inconsistent with those in solution. We analyse the distributions of clusters in detail using tandem mass spectrometry and suggest that the mean charge of clusters formed from certain detergents is governed by electrostatic repulsion. We discuss the dissociation of detergent clusters and propose that detergent evaporation it a key process in the protection of protein complexes during high energy collisions in the gas-phase.

Shape oscillations and stability of charged microdroplets

Classical Rayleigh theory predicts an instability of a surface charged liquid sphere, when the Coulomb energy E(C) exceeds twice the surface energy E(S). Previously, electrified liquid droplets have been found to disintegrate at a fissility X=E(C)/2E(S) well below one, however. We determine the stability of charged droplets in an electrodynamic levitator by observing the amplitude and phase of their quadrupolar shape oscillations as a function of the fissility. With this novel approach, which does not rely on an independent determination of the charge and surface tension of the droplets, we are able to confirm for the first time the Rayleigh limit of stability at X=1 for micrometer sized droplets of ethylene glycol.

Charge-induced fragmentation of sodium clusters

The fission of highly charged sodium clusters with fissilities X>1 is studied by ab initio molecular dynamics. Na4+24 is found to undergo predominantly sequential Na+3 emission on a time scale of 1 ps, while Na(Q+)(24) ( 5< or =Q< or =8) undergoes multifragmentation on a time scale > or =0.1 ps, with Na+ increasingly the dominant fragment as Q increases. All singly charged fragments Na(+)(n) up to size n = 6 are observed. The observed fragment spectrum is, within statistical error, independent of the temperature T of the parent cluster for T< or =1500 K. These findings are consistent with and explain recent trends observed experimentally.