Sandra Brünken receives Special Review Lecturer Award

Each year, one of the invited speakers at the International Symposium on Molecular Spectroscopy is designated the “Journal of Molecular Spectroscopy Special Review Lecturer”. This year the honor went to HFML-FELIX Professor Sandra Brünken.

Brünken gave a lecture entitled “In-situ infrared action spectroscopy of ion-molecule reactions: probing astrochemical pathways in interstellar clouds and planetary atmospheres”.

Ion-molecule reactions play a critical role in the complex chemistry of interstellar clouds and planetary atmospheres. Understanding these reactions and how they drive molecular evolution towards organic complexity requires detailed experimental data under controlled conditions that mimic those in the astronomical environments.

In this talk, Brünken presented recently developed methods for spectroscopic probing of ion-molecule reactions using infrared action spectroscopy. Her team’s experiments employ the FELion cryogenic ion trap tandem-mass spectrometer coupled to the FELIX infrared free-electron lasers a, enabling in-situ structural characterization of reactants, intermediates, and products at low temperatures relevant for astrochemical studies. Their multifaceted approach provides infrared spectroscopic fingerprints, reaction rate coefficients, isomeric branching ratios, and allows to unravel isomer differentiated reaction pathways.

She highlighted applications to the formation of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbonsb using infrared multiple photon dissociation (IRMPD) and recent results using leak-out spectroscopy (LOS)c to probe reactions involving smaller molecular ions of potential prebiotic interest.