Highly Energetic Collisions of Xe with Fullerene Clusters

Abstract

One subset of the fullerene activities is collision experiments using high energetic inert gases with fullerene clusters. We report on the formation of fullerene oligomers upto (C60)m, m=2-12 following the collisions of 200 keV and 400 keV Xe with (C60)55 fullerene clusters using classical reactive dynamics. A preference for C60+n (n=1-4) fragments was observed after the collision. The sequence of peaks detected in the range C105 - C122 after 1 ns from the collision is comparable with the experimental results. According to the post collisional dynamics, a dimer formed with one cross-link between two fullerenes led to a peanut shaped molecule after 25 ns and a linear trimer has turned into a carbon nanotube like structure after 43 ns. At the ns time scale, more organized carbon molecules as well as big amorphous carbon chunks also remained as collisional products.