Professor James Lisy is supported by a grant from the Experimental Physical Chemistry Program for studies of large clusters of alkali ions with ten or more molecules of solvation. A study of the competitive binding of ions to water versus other solvents, the use of vibrational spectroscopy to investigate the structures of products of intracluster ion chemistry, and the study of solvent shell structures around halide anions, will be accompanied by Monte Carlo and molecular dynamics calculations. %%% The interaction between ions and neutral molecules is of fundamental importance to the understanding of condensed phase chemistry, ion transport in biological systems and atmospheric chemistry. These experimental and theoretical studies on isolated clusters, consisting of an ion and ten or more solvent molecules, are expected to provide the information that is necessary to formulate our understanding of the nature of the interactions of ions with the surrounding molecules.
