Kb. Lyons et al., PHOTOINDUCED CROSS-LINKING AND DECOMPOSITION OF C-60 IN THE PRESENCE OF NITRIC-OXIDE (NO), Journal of physical chemistry, 99(45), 1995, pp. 16516-16518
We report observations of an enhancement of at least 3 orders of magni
tude in the rate for photoinduced cross linking of C-60 films under an
ambient NO atmosphere. Under extended illumination (for as long as 48
h at 8 W/cm(2)) the fullerene clusters disappear, and the film evolve
s toward an amorphous mixture of C, N, and O. Raman and XPS data show
signatures of C-N bond formation, We propose a mechanism for the role
of NO based on stabilization of the diradical intermediate formed in t
he primary photochemical step. This mechanism suggests a new generic p
athway for photoinduced transformation of fullerene films. Related exp
eriments with samples removed from NO and exposed to air also show a r
esidual polymerization effect with a decay time on the order of an hou
r.