A Study of Penning Ionization of Metastable Ne* and N2O:Potential Energy Surfaces

Penning Ionization Electron Spectroscopy (PIES) was used to study the reaction of metastable Ne* and N2O. Crossed, supersonic molecular beams were used to deliver the reagents to each other. Tentative peak assignments were made for the spectra obtained for two collision energies, 0.075eV and 0.136eV. The reaction was performed over a range of kinetic energies from 0.3eV to 4.0eV. The X state peak was found to be blue shifted by 0.01eV and the A state was found to be blue shifted by 0.04eV. This shift was used to make qualitative inferences about the nature of short range forces between the Ne* and N2O molecules up until the time of collision