A New Liquid Droplet Laser Desorption Source Combined with Supersonic Jet Expansion: Application to Phenol and its Water Clusters

Abstract

Abstract We have developed a new laser source, for the spectroscopy of nonvolatile molecules in gas phase. It is based on a laser induced liquid bead ion desorption source (LILBID) combined with a supersonic beam. The cold molecules produced with this technique are sampled with Resonant Two Photon Ionization spectroscopy (R2PI) to measurement of the gas phase optical spectra. LILBID allows to bring nonvolatile molecule from liquid phase (out of a droplet) into gas phase, by means of multi photon ablation with IR photons exciting the vibrations of the solvent. Phenol and its different water clusters have been used as an example to demonstrate the method and to standardise the new experimental setup. The recorded R2PI spectral data of phenol monomer and its different water clusters obtained from this laser desorption technique are in very good agreement with the previously published data. This technique opens a new door for the measurement of molecules under microsolvation and potentially for zwitterion formation of thermally labile, nonvolatile molecules such as amino acids or biomolecules.