Temperature effects on prevalent structures of hydrated Fe⁺ complexes: infrared spectroscopy and DFT calculations of Fe⁺(H₂O)n (n = 3-8).

Hydrated Fe(+) ions are produced in a laser-vaporization cluster source of a triple quadrupole mass spectrometer. The Fe(+)(H2O)n (n = 3-8) complexes are mass-selected and probed with infrared (IR) photodissociation spectroscopy in the OH-stretch region. Density functional theory (DFT) calculations are also carried out for analyzing the experimental IR spectra and for evaluating thermodynamic quantities of low-lying isomers.