Low-energy electron scattering from fullerenes and heavy complex atoms: negative ions formation

Abstract

Regge poles are generalized bound states. Our robust Regge pole methodology that embeds the crucial electron correlation effects and the vital polarization interaction is used to investigate negative ions formation in low-energy electron elastic scattering from the fullerenes Cn (n = 24, 28, 44, 60, 70, 74, 82, 94, 100, and 140) and the selected heavy lanthanide (Gd and Dy) and actinide (Pa and U) atoms through the elastic total cross sections (TCSs) calculations. All the TCSs are found to be characterized by Ramsauer–Townsend minima, shape resonances, and dramatically sharp resonances manifesting stable ground and metastable anionic formation during the collisions. The ground states anionic binding energies (BEs) for the Cn− (n = 24, 28, 44, 60, 70, and 82) match excellently the measured electron affinities (EAs). The thus benchmarked Regge pole methodology on the ground states anionic BEs for these fullerenes is then used to calculate the ground and the metastable elastic TCSs for the fullerenes, and the heavy atoms wherefrom their anionic BEs are extracted and compared with the measured EAs where they are available. Surprisingly, the C74 fullerene has the largest anionic ground state BE value among the investigated fullerenes in this paper and the ground state of the C140− anion has a large BE as well. Many of these fullerenes could be useful in nanocatalysis, sensor technology and organic solar cells through their ground and metastable anionic BEs. For the heavy atoms the extracted ground and metastable anionic BEs are compared with the measured and calculated EAs. These results particularly the ground states anionic BEs of the fullerenes and heavy atoms are expected to inspire and guide the long overdue experimental and theoretical explorations of electron attachment in low-energy electron scattering in these and related systems.