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Electron Affinities of C60 and C70 and Cooling of Their Anions

J. E. Navarro Navarrete1, P. Martini1, S. Rosén1, A. Simonsson1, P. Reinhed1, M. Björkhage1, M. Blom1, J. Alexander1, M. C. Ji1 et al.

M. K. Kristiansson1, R. Barzaga2, F. Aguilar-Galindo3,4, M. Alcamí3,4,5, S. Diaz-Tendero3,4,6, K. Hansen7, M. Gatchell1, H. Cederquist1, H. T. Schmidt1, and H. Zettergren1,*

  • *Contact author: henning@fysik.su.se
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Phys. Rev. Lett. 135, 213001 – Published 20 November, 2025

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1103/j2sv-7v9l

Abstract

We combine cryogenic storage of fullerene anions up to minutes with laser photo-detachment spectroscopy and measure the electron affinities to be 2.684(3) eV for C60 and 2.7665(3) eV for C70, which settle long-standing issues concerning these values. We find that C70− cools more efficiently than C60− and that this is due to differences in photon emission from electronically excited states populated by inverse internal conversion (recurrent fluorescence). We also find that intramolecular vibrational redistribution is no longer effective at low internal energies of C60− or C70−. Radiative cooling becomes extremely slow below intramolecular vibrational redistribution decoupling energies of 0.32(2) and 0.13(3) eV for C60− and C70−, respectively.

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Phys. Rev. Lett. 135, 213001– Published 20 November, 2025
  • Received 29 January 2025
  • Accepted 16 October 2025
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