Statistical mechanics of fullerene coalescence growth

Abstract

Among the different carbon allotropes fullerenes are exceptionally intriguing for their spheroidal topology out of pentagons and hexagons. However, the dominant formation mode is still ambiguous. Here, we analyze the fullerene formation process by the statistical analysis of fullerene sizes produced in a laser-induced microplasma finding that a simple two-parameter lognormal distribution describes impressively well the cluster frequencies under various conditions. Our findings clearly reveal coalescent growth following a classical collision dynamics and disagree with several earlier assumptions.

Magic and hot giant fullerenes formed inside ion irradiated weakly bound C60 clusters

“…24 This strongly indicates a statistical growth to a hot giant fullerene distribution very much like the ones obtained with laser ablation of C 7 H 6 O 4 . 24 In contrast, the C 70 -C 96 region exhibits large peak to peak variations and, thus, their formation mechanisms are most likely different.…”

“…24 This strongly indicates a statistical growth to a hot giant fullerene distribution very much like the ones obtained with laser ablation of C 7 H 6 O 4 . 24 In contrast, the C 70 -C 96 region exhibits large peak to peak variations and, thus, their formation mechanisms are most likely different. A picture including size-up processes from C 60 appears reasonable and is consistent with interpretations of experiments on laser desorption of surfaces covered with C 60 , 25 in which fused fullerenes-with a similar intensity distribution in the n = 72-84 range as the present one-were recorded with such low laser fluence that only very few fullerenes beyond C 84 were produced.…”

Formations of DumbbellC118andC119inside Clusters ofC60Zettergren1, Rousseau2, Wang3 et al. 2013Phys. Rev. Lett.652480View full textAdd to dashboardCite

“…These projectile ions interact with clusters of fullerenes from a liquid nitrogen cooled cluster aggregation source operated with a flow of He gas [14]. The cold source produces neutral van der Waals clusters following a broad lognormal size distribution [15]. When the beam pulse has left the interaction region, the extraction voltage is switched on after a delay of 0:1 s and the mass-to-charge ratio of the positively charged collision products are measured by a linear time-of-flight mass spectrometer.…”

Ions colliding with clusters of fullerenes—Decay pathways and covalent bond formations

“…The distribution of cluster sizes most likely follows a lognormal distribution. 12 The positively charged collision products are analyzed with the aid of a linear time-of-flight mass spectrometer. 13 The ions hit a gold coated steel plate at the end of the spectrometer from which the emitted secondary electrons are guided to a microchannel plate (MCP) detector by a weak magnetic field.…”