This roadmap reviews the new, highly interdisciplinary research field studying the behavior of condensed matter systems exposed to radiation. The Review highlights several recent advances in the field and provides a roadmap for the development of the field over the next decade. Condensed matter systems exposed to radiation can be inorganic, organic, or biological, finite or infinite, composed of different molecular species or materials, exist in different phases, and operate under different thermodynamic conditions. Many of the key phenomena related to the behavior of irradiated systems are very similar and can be understood based on the same fundamental theoretical principles and computational approaches. The multiscale nature of such phenomena requires the quantitative description of the radiation-induced effects occurring at different spatial and temporal scales, ranging from the atomic to the macroscopic, and the interlinks between such descriptions. The multiscale nature of the effects and the similarity of their manifestation in systems of different origins necessarily bring together different disciplines, such as physics, chemistry, biology, materials science, nanoscience, and biomedical research, demonstrating the numerous interlinks and commonalities between them. This research field is highly relevant to many novel and emerging technologies and medical applications.

• Publication type
• Journal Article MeSH
• Review MeSH

We probe the separation of ligands from iron tetracarbonyl methyl acrylate (Fe(CO)4(C4H6O2) or Fe(CO)4MA) induced by the interaction with free electrons. The motivation comes from the possible use of this molecule as a nanofabrication precursor and from the corresponding need to understand its elementary reactions fundamental to the electron-induced deposition. We utilize two complementary electron collision setups and support the interpretation of data by quantum chemical calculations. This way, both the dissociative ionization and dissociative electron attachment fragmentation channels are characterized. Considerable differences in the degree of precursor fragmentation in these two channels are observed. Interesting differences also appear when this precursor is compared to structurally similar iron pentacarbonyl. The present findings shed light on the recent electron-induced chemistry of Fe(CO)4MA on a surface under ultrahigh vacuum.

• Keywords
• FEBID precursor, electron collision, focused electron beam-induced deposition (FEBID), iron tetracarbonyl methyl acrylate,
• Publication type
• Journal Article MeSH

Irradiation-driven fragmentation and chemical transformations of molecular systems play a key role in nanofabrication processes where organometallic compounds break up due to the irradiation with focused particle beams. In this study, reactive molecular dynamics simulations have been performed to analyze the role of the molecular environment on the irradiation-induced fragmentation of molecular systems. As a case study, we consider the dissociative ionization of iron pentacarbonyl, Fe(CO)5, a widely used precursor molecule for focused electron beam-induced deposition. In connection to recent experiments, the irradiation-induced fragmentation dynamics of an isolated Fe(CO)5+ molecule is studied and compared with that of Fe(CO)5+ embedded into an argon cluster. The appearance energies of different fragments of isolated Fe(CO)5+ agree with the recent experimental data. For Fe(CO)5+ embedded into an argon cluster, the simulations reproduce the experimentally observed suppression of Fe(CO)5+ fragmentation and provide an atomistic-level understanding of this effect. Understanding irradiation-driven fragmentation patterns for molecular systems in environments facilitates the advancement of atomistic models of irradiation-induced chemistry processes involving complex molecular systems.

• Publication type
• Journal Article MeSH