RING-STACKING CONSIDERATION ON HIGHER FULLERENE GROWTH

A hypothetical ring-stacking procedure combined with the isolated-pent agon rule(IPR) shows variety of formation pathways of many fullerene s tructures with a 5- and 6-membered ring carbon cage. Combining the rin g-stacking procedure with energetic considerations, the numbers of pos sible reaction channels are dramatically reduced within the framework of the ring-stacking considerations. This, in turn, gives the results that only some specific isomers of large fullerenes are selectively pr oduced. The resulting fullerene structures specified are surprisingly well consistent with the recent experimental results.