Formation Mechanism on Fullerene Nanoparticles

Academic Paper from the year 2023 in the subject Biology - Micro- and Molecular Biology, grade: 70, University of Greenwich, language: English, abstract: The exact pathway of these mechanisms can depend on a variety of factors including the method of synthesis, the reaction conditions such as the temperature, pressure, presence of catalysts and the starting materials used. The formation mechanism of fullerene involves the following steps: Nucleation, Growth, Rearrangement, Fusion, Annealing and purification.

The proposed formation mechanism of fullerenes is based on a combination of experimental observations and theoretical models. In the early 1990s, researchers discovered that carbon clusters produced by methods such as laser ablation or arc discharge contained closed-cage structures consisting of pentagonal and hexagonal rings, which were later identified as fullerenes.