Fullerenes Under Extreme Temperatures and Stress: Collisions of Fullerenes With Surfaces and With Other Fullerenes

Abstract

The disintegration and coalescence processes of fullerenes have not yet been established, although certain aspects have been known for years. For example, the energy required to fragment C 60 has been calculated to lie in the 11–14 eV range, making it the most stable large molecule known, while reported experimental values are in the 4.5–7 eV range. In this report, we show that surface-impact heating of fullerene-ion beams, when properly calibrated, gives values in agreement with theory. In the last section, new mass spectrometric results on the coalescence reactions of hot fullerene vapors are presented.