Features of the methane clusters formation in supersonic jets of methane and its mixtures with monatomic gases

This work demonstrates the methane clusters formation in supersonic free jets of methane mixtures with helium and argon. The dependence of the clusterization process properties on the carrier gas, the volume fraction of methane in the mixture at the selected of gas jet parameters is shown. Impact of the methane dissociative ionization, and methane clusters fragmentation in the detector of the mass spectrometer on the process of condensation was demonstrated. The presence of protonated cluster ions of methane and the increase in their proportion with growing size of clusters was established. The formation of cluster ions with an attached methyl, methylene or methylidene was discovered.