ECAMP 15

Liquid microjet is a technique which enables bringing volatile liquids into the vacuum. It has been developed for the purpose of photoelectron spectroscopy which remains its most frequent use in laboratories world-wide. We have recently adapted this technique for probing collisions of free electrons with liquid interfaces.

I will present two main research directions on the electron collisions with the jets:

• Electron energy loss spectroscopy (EELS) is an approach for probing the excited states of the target. The incident electron energy is controlled and the outgoing (residual) energy is monitored, thus giving the information about energy levels of the target system. We recorded th EELS of liquid H2O microjets under different conditions. The resulting spectra and their possible interpretation will be presented.

• Electron-induced reactivity. Here we irradiate the surface of a liquid with an electron beam of controlled energy and the macroscopic chemical changes in the samples are analyzed with various analytical techniques offline [1]. We have used detection techniques previously developed in radiation chemistry to: (i) scavenge the OH radicals in aqueous solutions with chemical dosimeters and (ii) use fluorescent spectroscopy to quantify the concentration of solvated electrons in the irradiated samples.

[1] P. Nag et al. J. Phys. B: At. Mol. Opt. Phys. 56 (2023) 215201