The potential of using atmospheric-pressure spark ablation for production of atomic clusters has been shown in the recent past. In this study we used this method to produce atomic clusters in Argon and investigated their chemical composition with an atmospheric pressure interface time-of-flight mass spectrometer (APi-TOF-MS). Both anionic and cationic silver and gold clusters were generated and characterised. The carrier gas was used directly from the gas cylinder without the application of any additional gas purification. As a result, the carrier gas stream contained trace impurities of N₂, O₂, and H₂O, as well as radicals such as O, OH, and H and their ionized forms resulting from the plasma created by the sparks. The experimental results show that different reactivities towards oxygen and water traces can be observed depending on the number of metal atoms in the clusters, their polarity, as well as their compositions; e.g., Au_n⁻ shows less reactive behaviour towards oxygen and hydrogen compared to Ag_n⁻. The results also show that certain cluster types can be generated at large enough quantities by atmospheric-pressure spark ablation, which considering the low installation and operating cost of the technique can pave the way towards its exploitation for numerous technological applications.

最近已经显示出使用大气压火花烧蚀来产生原子团簇的潜力。在这项研究中，我们使用这种方法在氩气中产生原子团簇，并使用大气压界面飞行时间质谱仪（APi-TOF-MS）研究了它们的化学组成。阴离子和阳离子银和金簇均已生成并表征。载气直接从气瓶中使用，无需进行任何其他气体净化。结果，载气流包含微量的N ₂，O ₂和H ₂杂质O，以及自由基（例如O，OH和H）以及它们的电离形式，这些形式是由火花产生的等离子体产生的。实验结果表明，根据簇中金属原子的数量，极性和组成，可以观察到对氧和水痕迹的不同反应性。例如Au _ñ ^-节目朝氧和氢反应性较低的行为相比，银_ñ ^- 。结果还表明，通过大气压火花消融可以产生足够大量的某些簇类型，考虑到该技术的低安装和运行成本，可以为其在众多技术应用中的开发铺平道路。