Mixed cationic clusters of nitrogen and hydrogen

The addition of small impurities, such as a single proton charge carrier, in noble gas clusters has recently been shown to have considerable effects on their geometries and stabilities. Here, we report on a mass spectrometric study of cationic clusters of N₂ molecules and the effects that adding hydrogen, in the form of D₂, has on the systems. Protonated nitrogen clusters formed by the breakup of D₂ are shown to have similar behaviors as protonated rare gas clusters. For larger systems consisting of different mixtures of intact N₂ and D₂, different molecular species are found to be interchangeable sometimes with regard to magic numbers. This is especially true for the (N₂)_n(D₂)_mD⁺ systems with n + m = 17, which is particularly abundant for all measured combinations of n and m.