Elementary plasma reactions of environmental interest

Prediction and modelling of doubly-charged ions in the Earth's upper atmosphere

“…A limitation to these comparisons is that, together with the approach presented here, both authors fitted their model with experimental data while using very simple assumptions for the computation of productions and losses. According to Smith and Adams (1980), Breig et al (1977) may have well underestimated their values in light of what is expected experimentally for other doubly-charged ions such as Xe ++ or Ar ++ , and should be of the order of 10 −10 cm 3 s −1 .…”

In situmass spectrometry and ion chemistry in the stratosphere and troposphere

“…The main features of the chemistry of the low-pressure region have been known for many years and are the subject of numerous reviews and will not be discussed here (1)(2)(3)(4)(5)(6)(7)(8)(9)(10). In contrast, the in situ ion composition measurements of the stratosphere and especially the troposphere have come about relatively recently, and progress is continually being made.…”

“…The concentration of HNO, is given simply as tHNOjI= INO, (HiNO,), (9) [NO, (HNO,)]K where K is the equilibrium constant for reaction (8). The ion ratio is easy to determine from tLe ion composition measurements, and the equilibrium constant had been measured in a flowing afterglow system at NOAA (97).…”

“…These include photoionization, collisions with energetic particles and cosmic rays, and at ground level ionization from energetic particles released from radioactive decay of radon and other gases (1)(2)(3)(4)(5)(6)(7)(8)(9)(10). Although the ionization process varies, the primary ions are usually similar.…”

The SIFT and FALP techniques; applications to ionic and electronic reactions studies and their evolution to the SIFT-MS and FA-MS analytical methods

“…This approach avoids the inevitable complications inherent in FA reaction studies in which the ion source gas is inevitably present in the reaction region. Thus, in the SIFT, a wide variety of ions selected according to their mass-to-charge ratio, m/z, can be injected into flowing inert gas and their reactions studied with a range of molecules at thermal energies, including reactions that are judged to be important in naturally occurring media such as the terrestrial ionosphere [12,13], other planetary atmospheres [14,15] and interstellar gas clouds [16][17][18][19]. Thus, the SIFT technique greatly extended the study of ion-molecule reactions to include those that could not be studied using the FA.…”