Surface Induced Dissociation (SID) as a Tool for Probing Halogenated Alkanethiolate Self-Assembled Monolayer Films and Reactivity of Polyatomic Ions

Abstract

Low energy (< 100 eV) ion-surface collisions of small polyatomic ions on halogen terminated alkanethiolate self-assembled monolayers were used to probe both the structure and the property of the organic thin films and the nature of the polyatomic ions. In Chapter 3, the conversion of a portion of the projectile ion’s kinetic energy to internal energy is proven to be dominantly determined by the mass of the terminal group. The main factor that determines the electron transfer process is the orientation and magnitude of the interface dipole instead of their ionization energy of the surface . Ionsurface reactions are predominantly determined by the nature of the film’s terminal group. In chapter 4, a peptide, YGGFLR, was used to perform soft landing on three different self-assembled monolayers at two collision energies, 5 eV and 30 eV. Successful soft landing was achieved on all three surfaces at only 30 eV collision energy.