In the high electrostatic field of the 10-15 molecule thick anode
interphase taking a 200 V potential drop, we can expect powerful and
rigid bonding of water into chains of stretched molecules. In this
environment we can expect collective molecular actions, one of which
is "Interatomic Coulombic Decay" as described in the Physics News
Update quote below:
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PHYSICS NEWS UPDATE
The American Institute of Physics Bulletin of Physics News
Number 705 October 20, 2004 by Phillip F. Schewe, Ben Stein
ATOMS CAN TRANSFER THEIR INTERNAL "STRESS" TO OTHER ATOMS, new
experiments have revealed. Compared to atoms that are all by
themselves, atoms with a close neighbor have a very efficient and
surprising way to get rid of excess internal energy. An excited
atom can hand over its energy to a neighbor, a research team led by
the University of Frankfurt has demonstrated experimentally in a
measurement carried out at the Berlin synchrotron facility BESSY II
(R. Doerner, [EMAIL PROTECTED]). Predicted in 1997 by a
group at Heidelberg University (Cederbaum et al., Phys Rev. Lett, 15
Dec 1997), this decay mechanism occurs when atoms or molecules lump
together. Once an excited particle is placed in an environment of
other particles such as in clusters or fluids, the novel
de-excitation mechanism, called "Interatomic Coulombic Decay," leads
to the emission of very low-energy electrons from a particle that is
neighboring the initially excited one (see figure at
www.aip.org/png). The researchers demonstrated the effect in a pair
of weakly bound neon atoms. The two neon atoms were separated by
3.4 Angstroms (about 6 times the radius of the neon atom) and held
together by a weak "van der Waals" bond. Removing a tightly bound
electron from one of the neon atoms allowed one of the less tightly
bound atoms to jump down to the tightly bound spot and in the
process gained energy. The extra energy was not sufficient to
liberate any of the remaining electrons in the same neon atom, but
it was sufficient to release an electron in the neighboring atom.
This newly verified effect may have a wide-ranging impact in
chemistry and biology since it is predicted to happen frequently in
most hydrogen-bonded systems, most prominently liquid water.
Furthermore, it may be an important, and so far unknown, source of
low-energy electrons, which have recently been shown to cause damage
to DNA (see http://www.aip.org/pnu/2003/split/636-1.html). (Jahnke
et al., Physical Review Letters, 15 October 2004; also see
researchers' website at
http://hsb.uni-frankfurt.de/photoncluster/ICD.html)
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End Phys. Rev. Lett. article
Such a process may well provide a mechanism for electron boson
formation and for energy focusing phenomena in the anode interphase.
Horace Heffner
