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Updated: Nov 27, 2025

Spatial Separation of Molecular Conformers and Clusters
Published on: January 9, 2014
Ionic Liquid Clusters Generated from Electrospray Thrusters: Cold Ion Spectroscopic Signatures of Size-Dependent
Helen J Zeng1, Thien Khuu1, Steven D Chambreau2
1Sterling Chemistry Laboratory, Yale University, New Haven, Connecticut 06520, United States.
Abstract:
We determine the intramolecular distortions at play in the 2-hydroxyethylhydrazinium nitrate (HEHN) ionic liquid (IL) propellant, which presents the interesting case that the HEH+ cation has multiple sites (i.e., hydroxy, primary amine, and secondary ammonium groups) available for H-bonding with the nitrate anion. These interactions are quantified by analyzing the vibrational band patterns displayed by cold cationic clusters, (HEH+)(NO3-), n = 2-6, which are obtained using IR photodissociation of the cryogenically cooled, mass-selected ions. The strong interaction involving partial proton transfer of the acidic N-H proton in HEH+ cation to the nitrate anion is strongly enhanced in the ternary n = 2 cluster but is suppressed with increasing cluster size. The cluster spectra recover the bands displayed by the bulk liquid by n = 5, thus establishing the minimum domain required to capture this aspect of macroscopic behavior.
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