Electron Diffraction of Pyrene Nanoclusters Embedded in Superfluid Helium Droplets

We report electron diffraction of pyrene nanoclusters embedded in superfluid helium droplets. Using a least-squares fitting procedure, we have been able to separate the contribution of helium from those of the pyrene nanoclusters and determine the most likely structures for dimers and trimers. We confirm that pyrene dimers form a parallel double-layer structure with an interlayer distance of 3.5 angstrom and suggest that pyrene trimers form a sandwich structure but that the molecular planes are not completely parallel. The relative contributions of the dimers and trimers are similar to 6:1. This work is an extension of our effort of solving structures of biological molecules using serial single-molecule electron diffraction imaging. The success of electron diffraction from an all-light-atom sample embedded in helium droplets offers reassuring evidence of the feasibility of this approach.