Recent advances in the energetics and mechanisms of gas-phase ionic reactions

Three important aspects are still at the forefront of gas-phase ion chemistry: structure and energetics, mechanisms of gas-phase reactions relevant to condensed phases, and bridging the gap between gas-phase and solution. In this paper, we review some recent results of our laboratories: 1) The use of incoherent infrared radiation to promote multiphoton dissociation of ions is shown to be an efficient and convenient method to determine the energetics of ions and provide structural information of ions. 2) New experimental and theoretical data provide some interesting comparison between nucleophilic reactions at carbon, silicon and germanium centers, in the latter cases, the mechanism involves primarily an attachment-detachment process. 3) The ability to make gas-phase anions attached to neutral molecules provides an interesting approach towards the study of the stability, reactivity, structure and spectroscopy of gas-phase solvated ions.