Interatomic Coulombic decay (ICD)[1] is a general, fundamental property of atoms and molecules that have neighbors.
Until now it has been mainly demonstrated for atomic and molecular clusters, independently of whether they are of van-der-Waals or hydrogen bonded type.
[4][5][6] Typically, ICD takes place on the femto second time scale,[7][8][9] many orders of magnitude faster than those of the competing photon emission and other relaxation processes.
[11][12] There, ICD is faster than the competing proton transfer that is usually the prominent pathway in the case of electronic excitation of water clusters.
For instance, it was shown in experiments that low energy electrons do affect constituents of DNA effectively.