Production, Characterization, and Deposition of Carbon Clusters

Abstract

We have developed a new cluster ion source that can generate intense beams of metal and semiconductor clusters of a very wide-size range. With the source, we have observed intense beams of carbon clusters with mean cluster sizes of up to 4000 atoms/clusters. However, we have found that for generating small fullerenes, such as C₆₀ and C₇₀, the recently discovered technique by Kraetschmer et al. is much more efficient. By improving the technique, we have generated gram quantities of C₆₀ and C₇₀ and systematically investigated their thermal desorption properties. During the heating process, we have discovered that at high temperatures the bulk fullerenes, fullerite, transformed to another form of carbon, which still evaporates at temperatures above 700 C, but does not dissolve in benzene.