G. Vonhelden et al., EXPERIMENTAL-EVIDENCE FOR THE FORMATION OF FULLERENES BY COLLISIONAL HEATING OF CARBON RINGS IN THE GAS-PHASE, Nature, 363(6424), 1993, pp. 60-63
THE discovery1-6 of the spherical carbon cage compound buckminsterfull
erene (C60) and the recent development of methods to produce it in bul
k7 have led to an explosion in research in the physical and chemical p
roperties of this unique species8,9. Nevertheless, the question of the
formation mechanism of C60 (or of the other fullerenes) is still far
from settled. We have shown elsewhere that carbon clusters in the gas
phase develop from linear chains to planar ring systems to fullerenes
as their size increases. One can easily envisage the transformation fr
om chains to rings, but how the three-dimensional near-spherical fulle
renes evolve from large planar rings is not obvious. Here we show that
'heating' these large ring systems above their 'melting' point leads
to 100% fullerene formation accompanied by the evaporation of a small
carbon fragment (C1 or C3 for odd systems and C2 for even systems). We
propose a mechanism, based on these data, for efficient C60 productio
n in carbon arcs.