Charge driven fragmentation of biologically relevant molecules

A highly charged ion causes ultrastrong electric fields at the location of a close-by target molecule. As a response to those fields, several electrons are removed from the molecule on a very short time-scale. In the subsequent fragmentation process, ions with kinetic energies of a few hundred electron volts are produced. We investigated the interaction of 0.5 MeV Xe25+ with the nucleobases uracil and thymine by means of coincidence time-of-flight spectrometry. Our measurements clearly show that fragment kinetic energies reflect the molecular geometry and contain information on the fragmentation pathways.