Mass spectrometric study of diethyl ether cluster in UV, visible and IR laser wavelength

Ethers are important class of organic compounds since it has application as common solvent, fuel additives etc. Also, ethers are astrochemically important as they have been observed to be present in the interstellar medium. Diethyl ether is important aliphatic ether which is used in laboratory as well as in industry. Hence, it is necessary to understand the ionisation behaviour of diethyl ether. Earlier, single photon ionisation of diethyl ether has been studied by Botter et. al. and determines accurate ionisation energy to be 9.60 eV. Castlemann and co-workers studied photochemistry of diethyl ether clusters where effect of solvation in chemical reaction (intra-cluster ion molecule reaction) has been studied. Moreover, generation of multiply charged atomic ions of carbon and oxygen has been also observed in photoionisation of diethyl ether cluster at 532 nm with laser intensity ~109 -1011 W/cm². In the present work, diethyl ether cluster has been ionised using picoecond laser pulse of intensity ~ 1011-1013 W/cm² at different UV (266 nm), Visible (532 nm) and IR (1064) laser wavelength and ions were detected using time-of-flight mass spectrometer. The aim of this study is to understand the ionisation mechanism and fragmentation process of diethyl ether clusters at different laser wavelength