FORMATION AND CHEMISTRY OF THE FULLERENES

The yield of the truncated icosahedron molecule C60 in the initial car bon clustering laser vaporization supersonic molecular beam mass spect rometer experiments was believed to be quite low. The formation of C60 in this system could be explained in terms of quite chaotic growth of spiraling graphitic sheets which occasionally closed into the buckmin sterfullerene structure. Much higher yields of C60 (up to 20% of carbo n) have been obtained in arc vaporization and other experiments. The o riginal model of cluster growth proposed must be modified or discarded to account for these high yields. Two reasonable modifications which have been proposed are discussed.