Photodissociation of size-selected K+n clusters

Photofragmentation studies are described for size-selected ionized potassium-atom clusters, generated in a supersonic expansion and analyzed with a tandem time-of-flight system. In the range n=3 to 41 the relative ion intensities in photofragmentation spectra reflect the relative stabilities of the ion products. Moreover the photon-energy dependence of the fragmentation patterns suggests that photodissociation proceeds rather via a fast sequential evaporation of neutral monomers than via a fission process. A value can be deduced for the mean binding energy per atom which is increasing with the cluster size.