State of the art in dissociative electron attachment spectroscopy and its prospects

The latest achievements are presented in experimental and theoretical studies of resonance scattering of low-energy (0–15 eV) electrons from molecular targets in a gas phase resulting in the formation and decay of negative ions. The focus is on dissociative electron attachment spectroscopy for studying the microsecond dynamics of molecules containing an excess electron. Some studies of fundamental processes in isolated negative ions containing up to several electronvolts of excess energy are briefly described, and the possibility of using the results in interdisciplinary fields is discussed. A goal of the paper is to attract attention to the above-mentioned studies, which are rapidly developing abroad but only scarcely presented in the domestic literature.