This week the DESIREE infrastructure has been used by a team of researchers from the group of Paul Scheier at the University of Innsbruck. Led by Michael Gatchell, who has an international postdoctoral appointment jointly with Innsbruck and Stockholm University, the team is conducting the first merged beam experiments with large molecules at DESIREE. Michael also delivered an inspiring lecture on his research at Innsbruck on helium nanodroplets to the weekly SU ChemAtom seminar.

Who are you; where are you from?

Linnea Lundberg, Simon Albertini and Michael Gatchell from the University of Innsbruck in Austria.

What is your research in general?

Our main research is on the properties of clusters formed in helium nandroplets. We study everything from the structural properties of clusters to their spectroscopy.

How will your experiments at DESIREE further your research?

We have done a lot of work on both metal clusters and fullerene clusters in the past. In particular we have previously studied bond-forming reactions between gold and C60 in He droplets. Now we are aiming at studying the mutual neutralization of gold anions and fullerene cations. This will also serve as a test case for future mutual neutralization studies with fullerenes. We hope to be able to return for measurements on more astrophysical relevant systems if the experiments this week go well.

Are there any unique capabilities of DESIREE that you are exploiting?

Yes! The ability to merge ion beam at relative energies down to 0 eV is crucial for these measurements.

How do you find it to work at the infrastructure?

There are a lot of helpful people making sure that everything is working smoothly and we feel that we are in good hands.