A view of the attosecond laboratory: The vacuum chamber, inside of which water clusters are ionised by laser pulses, is seen on the left. (Photograph: ETH Zürich / H.J. Wörner )
A view of the attosecond laboratory: The vacuum chamber, inside of which water clusters are ionised by laser pulses, is seen on the left. (Photograph: ETH Zürich / H.J. Wörner ) - Researchers at ETH Zurich have developed a method that enables time-resolved measurements of electron motion in water clusters lasting only a few attoseconds. The technique can be used for more detailed studies of water as well as faster electronics. Virtually all vital chemical processes take place in aqueous solutions. In such processes, a decisive role is played by electrons that are exchanged between different atoms and molecules and thus, for instance, create or break chemical bonds. The details of how that happens, however, are difficult to investigate as those electrons move very fast. Researchers at ETH Zurich led by Hans Jakob Wörner, professor of physical chemistry, in collaboration with colleagues at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (USA) have now succeeded in studying the dynamics of electrons in clusters made of water molecules with a time resolution of just a few attoseconds.
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