We describe studies of the annealing and dissociation of even-numbered
carbon cluster ions containing 50-70 atoms. The polycyclic polyyne ri
ng isomers for cluster ions in this size regime can be annealed almost
entirely into the fullerene geometry, with a small fraction being con
verted into an isomer which appears to be a large monocyclic ring. Sup
risingly, we find that C-60(+) behaves essentially the same as other s
imilarly-sized clusters (such as C-58(+)). This has important implicat
ions for understanding the mechanism of these structural transformatio
ns, as well as the overall scheme for fullerene synthesis. The activat
ion energies for conversion of the polycyclic rings to fullerenes are
low and relatively independent of cluster size, though the efficiency
of forming a fullerene (rather than a large monocyclic ring) increases
with cluster size. Based on our experimental results, a detailed mech
anism is proposed to account for conversion of the polycyclic polyyne
rings into fullerenes. According to this mechanism, a fullerene fragme
nt is prepared by a Bergman enediyne cyclization followed by a radical
-induced ring closure and a retro [2 + 2] process. The polyyne chains
are then configured to spiral around the fullerene fragment and zip up
to form a spheroidal fullerene. We also consider how these processes
fit into an overall scheme for fullerene synthesis from small carbon f
ragments and describe a scheme that is consistent with the experimenta
l results presented here.