Helium Droplets Doped with Sulfur and C60

Clusters of sulfur are grown by passing superfluid helium nanodroplets through a pickup cell filled with sulfur vapor. In some experiments the droplets are co-doped with C60. The doped droplets are collided with energetic electrons and the abundance distributions of positively and negatively charged cluster ions are recorded. We report, specifically, distributions of Sm+, Sn-, and C60Sm- containing up to 41 sulfur atoms. We also observe complexes of sulfur cluster anions with helium; distributions are presented for HenSm- with n ≤ 31 and m ≤ 3. The similarity between anionic and cationic C60Sm± spectra is in striking contrast to the large differences between spectra of Sm+ and Sn-.

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