Gas phase hydrogen-bonded complexes of aromatic molecules: photoionization and energetics

The present review discusses the possibility of measuring the dissociation energy of gas phase complexes from their dissociative photoionization. A compilation of recent results on hydrogen-bonded complexes of aromatic molecules, with a polar solvent molecule (water, alcohol, NH3, HCl, etc.), playing the role of either proton donor or proton acceptor is presented. We show that laser experiments begin to provide a consistent set of energetic data that can be considered as benchmarks to assess quantum calculations as well as to parametrize the force field models used in biochemistry.