A new gas-phase electron diffraction apparatus is reported in this thesis. The machine complements the existing electron diffraction set-up at Edinburgh University. The new apparatus utilises an electron counting device consisting of a pair of stacked microchannel plates and a novel, position-sensitive anode counter rather than the photographic plate-rotating sector method more commonly used in electron diffraction studies. The work carried out with this detector is discussed together with results from a simulation program designed to evaluate the operational capabilities of the device under a range of experimental conditions. The molecular target source was provided by a Campargue-type molecular beam and the electron beam was produced by a telefocus electron gun. Both of these beams have been fully characterised and the results are presented in this work. A short review is given of the current developments in gas-phase electron diffraction. Finally, the structural refinements of two molecules studied using the photographic method are reported. These are 1,2-di-<I>tert</I>-butyldisilane and 1,2-dicarbapentaborane(7).
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:bl.uk/oai:ethos.bl.uk:650834 |
| Date | January 1996 |
| Creators | Fender, Robert Scott |
| Publisher | University of Edinburgh |
| Source Sets | Ethos UK |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Electronic Thesis or Dissertation |
| Source | http://hdl.handle.net/1842/14833 |
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