C60 Resonant Charge Transfer Through the Temporary Formation of Carbon Bonds

Charge transfer has been a well-studied subject for years due to its various applications to plasma physics, astrophysics, atmospheric sciences and other branches of physics and chemistry. Charge transfer is often used as a way of probing fundamental quantum mechanics as the dynamics of electrons is of crucial importance to these reactions. However, when charge transfer is studied with more complex targets, such as large molecules, charge transfer can be used to probe chemical reactions that are vital to properly understanding these collisions. We present our model on a new type of charge transfer between C₆₀ and its cation. Molecular dynamic simulations have shown that when these two large molecules collide, they temporarily bond forming a “dumbbell shaped” C₁₂₀ molecule. This temporary “bridge” extends the interaction time between the molecules increasing the charge transfer cross section. We compare our model to previously measured experimental data and find good agreement. To our knowledge this is the first theoretical model to predict large scattering angle C₆₀ resonant cross sections.