Appearance and ionization energies of Cz+60-2m and Cz+70-2m ions (with z and m up to 4) produced by electron impact ionization of C60 and C70, respectively

Abstract

Electron impact ionization of C60 and C70 has been studied as a function of electron energy in the threshold region using a crossed molecular beam/electron beam double focusing sector field mass spectrometer system. Appearance energies have been determined (using a special threshold extrapolating procedure) for Cz+60-2m and Cz+70-2m ions with z ranging from 1 to 4 and m from 0 to 4, respectively. Whereas the different charge states of the parent ions of C60 and C70 have the same appearance energies within the experimental error bars, the fragment ions of C70 show slightly higher values than their C60 counterparts due to an increased kinetic shift. The presently deduced ionization energies for the C60 parent ions are in excellent agreement with previously reported reliable data for Cz+60 ions (previous data are available only up to z is 3). In contrast, these experimental values disagree strongly with a theoretical calculation by Yannouleas and Landman predicting an approximately linear dependence of the ionization energy on the charge state z, i.e., the experimental values deviate strongly from linearity with increasing charge.