Wet electrons and how to dry them

Abstract

The decay of hydrated electrons, (H2O)n-for 13≤n≤40, due to absorption of the 300 K black body background radiation was studied. In addition, the competition between their fragmentation and electron detachment was investigated. It was found that while the large clusters exclusively fragment, the importance of the detachment channel overall increases with decreasing size. Between n=14 and n=30, there appeared to be large fluctuations and even-odd alternations in the relative importance of the two channels.