Determination of absolute photoionization cross-sections of alkanes and cyclo-alkanes.

Absolute photoionization and dissociative photoionization cross-sections of eleven n-alkanes (n-pentane, n-hexane, n-heptane, n-nonane, n-decane, n-undecane, n-dodecane, n-tridecane, n-tetradecane, n-pentadecane and n-hexadecane), three cyclo-alkanes (cyclopentane, methylcyclohexane and trans-decahydronaphthalene) and iso-octane were measured for photon energies from the ionization thresholds to 11.5 eV. The measurements were performed with the binary-liquid-mixture method utilizing the photoionization cross-sections of benzene as a calibration standard. The ionization energies of n-alkanes and cyclo-alkanes were also calculated at the B3P86/6-31 + +G(d,p) level and by the G3B3 method.