Cluster Isolated Chemical Reactions : Medium effects on reactivity
Résumé
Cluster Isolated Chemical Reaction (CICR) is a new method developed in our laboratory, which enables quantitative studies of heterogeneous chemical processes at a microscopic level. CICR technique consists in depositing in a controlled way reactants on free nanometric van der Waals clusters, that play the role of a reaction medium. It provides a way to study the influence of the reaction medium on the trapped reactants, on the reaction path and on the products. The present paper reviews some of the CICR results obtained in our laboratory concerning the reactivity of barium atoms and small barium aggregates with molecular reactants like N2O, CO2, SF6... on argon, methane or nitrogen clusters. Keywords: barium, clusters, chemiluminescence, chemical reactions, heterogeneous chemistry, mass spectrometry