CO2-laser driven production of fullerenes and Si-clusters from the gas phase

In this contribution we report on the incorporation of a laser driven flow reactor into a time-of-flight mass spectrometer (TOF-MS) for on-line analysis of the reaction products. This technique can be used for the production of intense molecular beams of refractory materials as an alternative approach to the well known laser vaporization technique introduced by Smalley and co-workers. But our method has the advantage that it can work in the continuous mode by employing a cw-laser and that the reaction parameters like temperature and compositions of the reactants can be controlled very easily during the experiment. (author)