Measurements of Atmospheric Ion Reactions

Book excerpt: Charge transfer and charged rearrangement collision cross sections were measured at energies down to 2 eV with identification of product ions and some state selection of primary ions. Electric impact studies of molecular oxygen with high resolution provided new important information on the ionization process, while investigations of negative ions in afterglows of atmospheric gases demonstrated the comparative lack of understanding in this important aspect of atmospheric deionization. The following reactions were studied by the ionization afterglow technique: ionic recombination in O2; thermalization diffusion and electron-ion dissociative recombination in N2; attachment in gases containing NO2; attachment and electron-ion dissociative recombination in gases containing NO. (Author).