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Abstract
A transmission electron microscope (TEM) study of individual soot grains forming fluffy carbon particles produced using the arc‐discharge technique revealed close‐packed arrangements of single‐wall ring structures with average diameters of 0.7, 1.1, 3.0, 5.5, and 8.2 nm. These structures were hypothesized to be C60 and giant, C540, C960, and C1500, fullerenes that could form by coalescence during condensation and soot agglomeration, although in situ solid‐state growth cannot be excluded. Mass spectroscopy and high performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) chromatography of the samples confirmed the presence of C60 fullerene in all samples giving confidence to the giant fullerene growth scenario. Our results suggest that fullerenes could be common in soot grains produced by this technique as well as being an important carbon phase in C‐rich accretion disks around young stellar objects and among the dust in the interstellar medium.
Acknowledgments
TEM analyses were performed at the Electron Microbeam Analyses Facility in the Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences (UNM) where Fleur Rietmeijer‐Engelsman provided technical support. This work was supported by NASA NAG5‐11762 (FJMR), ASI, MURST and CNR grants (AR). We thank Dr. Weisman of Rice University for his support (NSF grant CHE‐9900417).