Electron Attachment in Radiation Chemistry

Electron attachment (EA) is an important process of secondary low-energy electrons created during an interaction of ionizing radiation with matter. Experiments with isolated molecules in vacuum have demonstrated effectiveness of dissociative electron attachment (DEA) in their decomposition. However, studies in more realistic environments are difficult and often contradictory. In our group, we are developing new tools to study environmental effects on EA. In the proposed project, we will use these tools to perform systematic study of EA to DNA and its segments in the water environment. We will continue our efforts to quantify EA in real environments by use of newly designed molecules with distinct EA properties. We will develop new molecular beam source to compare EA and OH radical reactions on model cluster species. We will implement single molecule analysis using DNA origami templates to link the observations on the clusters with radiolysis experiments of plasmid DNA. This way, we gain unprecedented insight into the low-energy electron induced reactions in the radiation chemistry.