Spectroscopy with soft X-Ray radiation

Soft X-ray radiation (about 100 to 100000 eV, 12 to 0.012 nm) is capable of exciting or ionizing the electrons from 1s orbitals of molecules. This produces highly excited molecules (>10000 kJ/mol), which can emit a large part of their energy through the Auger-Meitner effect. Here, a valence electron fills the vacancy in the 1s orbital and transfers the released energy to another valence electron, which gets ionized. These auger electrons can be detected to infer information about the electronic structure of the molecule. We conduct experiments at the Synchrotron SOLEIL to detect these electrons as well as the produced cationic molecules. This project aims to investigate unstable molecules like Isocyanic acid (HNCO), Fulminic acid (HCNO) and Isothiocyanic acid (HNCS). These molecules have astrochemical relevance and may also play a role in the formation of the first prebiotic molecules. Further measurements with soft X-ray radiation are conducted at the Elettra synchrotron.