Secondary electron emission is the most important stage in the mechanism of radiation damage to DNA biopolymers induced by primary ionizing radiation. These secondary electrons ejected by the primary electron impacts can produce further ionizations, initiating an avalanche effect, leading to genome damage through the energy transfer from the primary objects to sensitive biomolecular targets, such as nitrogenous bases, saccharides, and other DNA and peptide components. In this work, the formation of positive and negative ions of purine bases of nucleic acids (adenine and guanine molecules) under the impact of slow electrons (from 0.1 till 200 eV) is studied by the crossed electron and molecular beams technique. The method used makes it possible to measure the molecular beam intensity and determine the total cross-sections for the formation of positive and negative ions of the studied molecules, their energy dependences, and absolute values. It is found that the maximum cross section for formation of the adenine and guanine positive ions is reached at about 90 eV energy of the electron beam and their absolute values are equal to 2.8 × 10(-15) and 3.2 × 10(-15) cm(2), respectively. The total cross section for formation of the negative ions is 6.1 × 10(-18) and 7.6 × 10(-18) cm(2) at the energy of 1.1 eV for adenine and guanine, respectively. The absolute cross-section values for the molecular ions are measured and the cross-sections of dissociative ionization are determined. Quantum chemical calculations are performed for the studied molecules, ions and fragments for interpretation of the crossed beams experiments.

Production of positive and negative ions of cytosine molecules (nucleic acid base) has been studied using a crossed electron and molecular beam technique. The method developed by the authors enabled the molecular beam intensity to be measured and the electron dependences and the absolute values of the total cross sections of production of both positive and negative cytosine ions to be determined. It has been shown that the total positive cytosine ion production cross section reaches its maximal value of 7.8 × 10−16 cm2 at the 78 eV electron energy. Dissociative ionization cross sections have also been determined. The maximum total negative cytosine ion production cross section was measured to be 4.2 × 10−18 cm2 at 1.5 eV.

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