Helium droplets provide an exotic and unique environment for the study of physical and chemical phenomena. Properties of these droplets include a low temperature (0.37 K), their superfluidity, and the ability to easily add a wide variety of atoms and molecules. This tutorial review provides a concise account of the basic principles of helium droplets, including how to form, dope, and interrogate these objects. There then follows a series of selected applications grouped under particular themes, with strong bias towards topics likely to be of particular interest to chemists.

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Direct preparation of long one-dimensional (1D) nanostructures with diameters <10 nm inside superfluid helium droplets is reported. Unlike conventional chemical synthetic techniques, where stabilizers, templates, or external fields are often required to induce 1D growth, here, we exploit the use of quantized vortices to guide the formation of ultrathin nanowires. A variety of elements have been added to the droplets to demonstrate that this is a general phenomenon, including Ni, Cr, Au, and Si. Control of the length and diameter of the nanowires is also demonstrated.

A theoretical model has been developed to describe the probability of charge transfer from helium cations to dopant molecules inside helium nanodroplets following electron impact ionization. The location of the initial charge site inside helium nanodroplets subject to electron impact has been investigated and is found to play an important role in understanding the ionization of dopants inside helium droplets. The model is consistent with a charge migration process in small helium droplets that is strongly directed by intermolecular forces originating from the dopant, whereas for large droplets (tens of thousands of helium atoms and larger) the charge migration increasingly takes on the character of a random walk. This suggests a clear droplet size limit for the use of electron impact mass spectrometry for detecting molecules in helium droplets.2

The formation of Ag nanoparticles by the addition of Ag atoms to helium droplets has been investigated. The resulting nanoparticles were then imaged by transmission electron microscopy after being deposited on a thin solid surface. In large helium droplets chains of Ag nanorods were observed similar to recently reported track-like deposits [Gomez et al., Phys. Rev. Lett., 2012, 108, 155302]. However, by adjusting the experimental conditions chains of spherical nanoparticles could also be seen with a nearly uniform inter-particle spacing. Given that spherical Ag nanoparticles have no intrinsic anisotropy, the only viable explanation is that these particles must