Electron induced ionization and dissociation of molecular ions

The present study is devoted to the quantitative investigation of electron-induced ionization and dissociation reactions of molecular ions using a novel experimental technique developed in our lab.These reactions are of importance in plasmas where step-wise ionization and dissociation reactions can occur at appreciable rates and thus strongly influence the plasma properties. We have extended studies for the case of electron-induced dissociation reactions of molecular ions from the mere measurement of cross section functions to the simultaneous determination of the kinetic energy distribution (KED) of the product ions formed and the corresponding cross section q. This allows us to obtain three-dimensional plots of the single differential cross section dq/dW versus incident electron energy E and product ion kinetic energy W.