Chemistry Letters, Vol.48, No.12, 1472-1475, 2019
The Smallest Aromatic Tetracation Produced in Gas Phase by Intense Femtosecond Laser Pulses
We report the production of the long-lived hexafluorobenzene tetracation, which is the smallest aromatic tetracation ever investigated, by 0.8 mu m femtosecond laser pulses. The yield of tetracation relative to trication radical is 0.11. Using the time-of-flight mass spectrometer equipped with the fast ion gate and the curved field reflectron, we estimate the lower limit of the lifetime of tetracation to be 9 mu s. Confinement of multiple positive charges in a small organic molecule is unexpected; however, our finding is an answer of this fundamental concern.