{"id":54,"date":"2015-03-30T17:47:34","date_gmt":"2015-03-30T17:47:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.staff.ncl.ac.uk\/nick.walker\/?page_id=54"},"modified":"2015-04-01T14:45:30","modified_gmt":"2015-04-01T14:45:30","slug":"exploring-chemistry-in-plasma","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/www.staff.ncl.ac.uk\/nick.walker\/exploring-chemistry-in-plasma\/","title":{"rendered":"Exploring Chemistry in Plasma"},"content":{"rendered":"

Exploring Chemistry in Plasma Environments<\/strong><\/p>\n

Plasma is the state of matter found abundantly in stars. It is the\u00a0result of transient, intermittent events such as lightning strikes\u00a0or meteor impacts in the terrestrial environment and is thus\u00a0often regarded as an \u2018\u2018exotic\u2019\u2019 state. Commercially, the production\u00a0of materials by chemical vapour deposition is assisted by plasma\u00a0chemistry.<\/p>\n

Our experiments study the plasma generated when\u00a0a focussed laser pulse is used to vaporise material from the surface of a\u00a0metal target. Immediately following the laser pulse, the plasma consists of a mixture of high-energy electrons, atoms and molecules. What chemical products are preferentially formed given that many competing reaction pathways exist?<\/p>\n

\"plasma<\/a>

Plasma generated by vaporisation of metal by the focussed laser pulse is visible as the green spot at the centre of this image. Taken through a viewport on our spectrometer.<\/p><\/div>\n

Broadband rotational spectroscopy allows many different reaction products to be detected simultaneously. We discovered that vaporisation of silver in the presence of a gas sample containing C2<\/sub>H2<\/sub>, SF6<\/sub> and argon results in\u00a0the formation of C2<\/sub>H2<\/sub>-AgCCH. Some C2<\/sub>H2<\/sub> breaks up within the plasma to allow the formation of AgCCH which can subsequently attach to an intact C2<\/sub>H2<\/sub> molecule. A second study revealed that AgCCCl, a molecule which\u00a0is geometrically similar to ethyne but where\u00a0the two hydrogen atoms have been replaced by silver and chlorine respectively, forms in plasma from products of\u00a0the fragmentation of\u00a0CCl4<\/sub> and the\u00a0vaporisation of silver metal.<\/p>\n

\"AgCCCl<\/a>

Like ethyne, AgCCCl is a linear molecule containing two carbon atoms connected by a triple bond.<\/p><\/div>\n

This\u00a0work is more completely described in the articles\u00a0linked below. The first of these is available on an “open access” license.<\/p>\n

Link to other publications<\/a><\/p>\n

1. A Perspective on Chemistry in Transient Plasma from Broadband Rotational Spectroscopy<\/a><\/em>, D.P. Zaleski, S.L. Stephens and N.R. Walker,\u00a0Phys. Chem. Chem. Phys.<\/em>, 16<\/strong>, 25221, (2014).
\n2.\u00a0Chemistry in Laser-Induced Plasmas: Formation of M\u2212C=C\u2212Cl (M =\u00a0Ag or Cu) and their Characterization by Rotational Spectroscopy<\/em>, D.P. Zaleski, N.R. Walker, D.P. Tew and A.C. Legon,\u00a0J. Phys. Chem. A<\/em>, 119<\/strong>, 2919 (2015)<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Exploring Chemistry in Plasma Environments Plasma is the state of matter found abundantly in stars. It is the\u00a0result of transient, intermittent events such as lightning strikes\u00a0or meteor impacts in the terrestrial environment and is thus\u00a0often regarded as an \u2018\u2018exotic\u2019\u2019 state. … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1061,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","template":"showcase.php","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-54","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.staff.ncl.ac.uk\/nick.walker\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/54","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.staff.ncl.ac.uk\/nick.walker\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.staff.ncl.ac.uk\/nick.walker\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.staff.ncl.ac.uk\/nick.walker\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1061"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.staff.ncl.ac.uk\/nick.walker\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=54"}],"version-history":[{"count":43,"href":"https:\/\/www.staff.ncl.ac.uk\/nick.walker\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/54\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":291,"href":"https:\/\/www.staff.ncl.ac.uk\/nick.walker\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/54\/revisions\/291"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.staff.ncl.ac.uk\/nick.walker\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=54"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}