Fragmentation and internal steric rearrangement of C₆₀ ^- In electron transfer dynamics

The crossed molecular beam technique is used for producing C₆₀ ^- species through potassium-buckyball collision processes, and studying the collision dynamics in an energy ranging from 10 eV up to 500 eV. At low collision energies only the negative parent ion is formed. As long as the collision energy is increased the fragmentation pattern of the fullerene negative ion could be identified and relative total cross-sections could be measured. Surprisingly, some satellite contributions have been observed in the band structure of C₆₀ ^- parent ion time-of-flight spectrum, which points to the existence of distinct conformational C ₆₀ ^- isomers, which are likely to be formed during the collision, favoured by the strong polarization of the C₆₀ ^- in the presence of the K⁺ projectile ion. Such presumed detection of different spheroidal metastable C₆₀ ^- conformers was made possible due to an electric effect operating at the nanoscale.