Efficient trapping of silver cations in a rare gas matrix: Ag3+ in argon

Abstract

Mass selected cations of Ag clusters are deposited, together with Ar seeded with CO 2 ͑or other electron scavengers such as O 2 , N 2 O, or CCl 4 ͒, on a cold substrate, while being flooded with low energy electrons. Optical absorption measurements reveal an efficient trapping of Ag cluster cations in the Ar matrix, provided that CO 2 or another electron scavenger is present to ensure charge neutrality of the matrix. The spectrum of Ag 3 + thus obtained is in excellent agreement with previous predictions from quantum chemical calculations.

Spin–orbit effects in optical spectra of gold–silver trimers

“…[3][4][5]12 The optical spectra of neutral Ag 3 and Au 3 have been reported for the gas-phase, 13,14 as well as in noble gas matrices. [15][16][17][18] The absorption spectrum of Ag 3 + has been measured in argon, 19 and is in good agreement with scalar-relativistic equation-of-motion coupled cluster calculations (EOM-CCSD). 20 Although the influence of 4d electrons on the optical response is generally assumed to be less important, their inclusion seems to be crucial for a quantitative description of the spectrum.…”

Dynamics of clusters and molecules in contact with an environment

“…This is exemplified in Fig. 19 which compares the fluorescence of Ag + 3 embedded in Ar matrix [LRF07] with ab-initio calculations for a free Ag + 3 cluster [BKPBF99]. (The experimental preparation of charged, embedded cluster uses co-deposited CO 2 molecules as scavengers to prevent re-neutralization.)…”

Plasmonic Landau damping in active environments

“…In the SI 46 , we consider conduction electrons confined to the MNP by a potential U + (x) and show that their meanfield Coulomb interaction gives rise to a set of multipolar oscillators corresponding to particle-localized collective 44 , green line) LSP energy to photofragmentation spectroscopy in vacuum (white triangles, 1 standard deviation error bars) 36 and matrix deposition spectroscopies 37,38 in argon (black circles with 1 standard deviation error bars and grey boxes). Quantitative agreement between the theory and experiments shows that the theory effectively incorporates embedding dielectric effects.…”

“…In Fig. 1b, we compare ω * 10 to photofragmentation spectroscopy 36 of silver clusters in free space (ε 2 = 1, red line) and to matrix deposition spectroscopies 37,38 of silver clusters embedded in argon (ε 2 = 1.7 44 , green line). We see that ω * 10 rapidly blueshifts as a decreases in excellent agreement with the datasets, validating our approximations and indicating that our theory effectively incorporates the embedding dielectric.…”