Activation energies for evaporation from protonated and deprotonated water clusters from mass spectra

Experimental mass abundance spectra are used to extract evaporative activation energies (dissociation energies) for protonated water clusters, (H(2)O)(N)H(+), and deprotonated water clusters, (H(2)O)(N)OH(-), in the size range up to hundred molecules. The inversion is achieved by application of the shell correction method adapted from nuclear physics to the abundance spectra. The well known abundance anomaly for protonated clusters which occurs for N=20-22 is found to have the characteristic behavior of a shell closing, whereas other apparent magic numbers are only prominent peaks in the abundance spectra because of the instability of the evaporative precursor. For the deprotonated clusters, we find a similar shell closing for N=55-56.