RSC Prizewinner's Lecture: Probing Electron‐molecule Reactions with Light

Probing Electron-molecule Reactions with Light

The reaction of an electron and molecule to form an anion is one of the simplest chemical transformations, yet it is also deceivingly complex. The fundamental physical chemistry underpinning the reaction has been studied for many decades through gas-phase electron-molecule collision experiments, but these have some stark limitations such as a lack of time-resolution and an inability to probe the effect of complex environments on the reaction. We have developed new methods to probe electron-molecule reactions using light, which overcomes these limitations and I will present results that show how the electron attachment dynamics can be tracked in real-time and how the electron-molecule resonances are affected by incremental water clustering.