Q. Ru et al., ATTRACTION AND ORIENTATION PHENOMENA OF BUCKY ONIONS FORMED IN A TRANSMISSION ELECTRON-MICROSCOPE, Chemical physics letters, 259(3-4), 1996, pp. 425-431
Our transmission electron microscopy study of bucky onions formed in a
transmission electron microscope (TEM) showed two main phenomena: (1)
the five-fold symmetry axes of icosahedral and quasi-icosahedral buck
y onions are all parallel to the viewing direction, (2) the vertices a
t the top and bottom of the bucky onions strongly prefer to be caught
by a vertex of another particle. A growth model is presented, showing
that the growth of each bucky onion originates from the pentagonal rin
gs at the top and bottom, where a locally strong ring-current paramagn
etism is excited by the electron-beam irradiation and the magnetic fie
ld of the objective lens.