SOLID-STATE TOPOLOGICAL TRANSFORMATION OF C60 INTO GRAPHITE AND DIAMOND

Recent experiments have shown that a C60 crystalline powder can partia lly transform into diamond under non-hydrostatic pressure, or into gra phite under shock compression. These transformations are relatively fa st and occur far from the liquid-carbon thermodynamic stability domain : this suggests that the transformation process does not involve long range atomic diffusion. We here propose a short range atomic displacem ent process and define an irreversible continuous transformation relat ing fullerite (FCC structure) to diamond or graphite . We conclude tha t a controlled low temperature, non-hydrostatic compression of highly (1,1,1) oriented C60 crystals should lead to a quantitive route for sy nthesizing diamond.