Direct Measurement of Water Cluster Concentrations by Infrared Cavity Ringdown Laser Absorption Spectroscopy

The recently developed technique of infrared cavity ringdown laser absorption spectroscopy (IR-CRLAS) has been employed in the 3.0 μm region to determine the absolute concentrations of water dimers, trimers, tetramers, and pentamers in a pulsed supersonic expansion for the first time. Additional spectral features are reported, one of which we assign to the bound O−H stretching bands of the hexamer. Additionally, by simple variation of the jet stagnation pressure, the collective O−H stretching absorption from all clusters produced in the expansion was observed to change from that of discrete features of small clusters to band profiles of liquid water and finally to amorphous ice.