Eur. Phys. J. D 34, 205-209 (2005)
https://doi.org/10.1140/epjd/e2005-00111-0

A femtosecond laser study of the endohedral fullerenes Li@C₆₀ and La@C₈₂

¹ Department of Physics, Göteborg University, 41296 Göteborg, Sweden
² Max-Born-Institut für Nichtlineare Optik und Kurzzeitspektroskopie, Max-Born-Str. 2a, 12489 Berlin, Germany
³ Department of Chemistry, Nagoya University, 464-8602 Nagoya, Japan

Corresponding author: ^a Eleanor.Campbell@fy.chalmers.se

Received: 6 September 2004
Published online: 13 July 2005

Abstract

The endohedral fullerenes La@C₈₂ and Li@C₆₀ have been studied in the gas phase with femtosecond laser excitation. The two molecules show qualitatively the same behaviour with respect to ion yield vs. pulse energy, but markedly different fragmentation patterns, with La@C₈₂ fragmenting via the shrink-wrap mechanism and Li@C₆₀ predominantly losing the metal atom in the first fragmentation step. The ion yields and electron energy distributions of La@C₈₂ agree well with a recently developed model for fs laser ionisation of C₆₀.