Abstract
Negative-ion mass spectroscopy has been applied to a study of electron attachment to van der Waals clusters. A new ion source, which utilizes impact of high-Rydberg rare gas atoms as a source of electrons with kinetic energies as low as -10 meV, has been constructed. The design and the operation of this source as well as a detector of massanalyzed ions by way of negative-to-positive charge conversion are described. As test experiments, the intensities of the various negative cluster ions produced from the neutral clusters of CCl4 and CH3CN have been studied, and the characteristic features of the present technique for formation of negative cluster ions are discussed.
