X-ray radiation damage cycle of solvated inorganic ions.
basic_science · Level V
Where this comes from
- Record sourced from PubMed, PMID 38816362.
- Also identified by DOI 10.1038/s41467-024-48687-2 and PMC identifier 11139941.
- Licence recorded as CC BY.
- The licence permits redistribution, so the abstract is shown in full and the full text is available from the publisher.
Abstract
X-ray-induced damage is one of the key topics in radiation chemistry. Substantial damage is attributed to low-energy electrons and radicals emerging from direct inner-shell photoionization or produced by subsequent processes. We apply multi-electron coincidence spectroscopy to X-ray-irradiated aqueous solutions of inorganic ions to investigate the production of low-energy electrons (LEEs) in a predicted cascade of intermolecular charge- and energy-transfer processes, namely electron-transfer-mediated decay (ETMD) and interatomic/intermolecular Coulombic decay (ICD). An advanced coincidence technique allows us to identify several LEE-producing steps during the decay of 1s vacancies in solvated Mg<sup>2+</sup> ions, which escaped observation in previous non-coincident experiments. We provide strong evidence for the predicted recovering of the ion's initial state. In natural environments the recovering of the ion's initial state is expected to cause inorganic ions to be radiation-damage hot spots, repeatedly producing destructive particles under continuous irradiation.