A molecular beam scattering investigation of methanol-noble gas complexes: Characterization of the isotropic potential and insights into the nature of the interaction

► We measured cross sections for the scattering of CH3OH onto noble gases (Ng) targets. ► We obtained the phenomenological radial interaction for all the studied complexes. ► We formulated potential energy surfaces as pairwise additive multicenter model. ► The nature of interaction is mainly due to van der Waals and induction components. ► This is at variance with the behavior of analogous water or ammonia complexes.