TEMPERATURE-DEPENDENT FUSION OF COLLIDING C60 FULLERENES FROM MOLECULAR DYNAMICS SIMULATIONS

Although both experimental and modeling studies have found that C{sub 60} is highly resistant to reactions during hypervelocity surface impacts, recent experiments have shown that at sufficient collision energies C{sub 60} fullerenes can fuse. Stimulated by these results, we have performed extensive molecular dynamics simulations of C{sub 60} collisions using a reactive empirical bond-order (REBO) potential. In this letter we investigate the behavior of colliding C{sub 60} molecules over the temperature range 0-4000 K and collision energies of 10-140 eV. We find that at sufficient collision energies and/or temperatures these molecules can fuse, consistent with experimental evidence. Moreover, we find that increasing the initial C{sub 60} temperature from 0 to 4000 K can dramatically decrease the collision energy necessary for observing C{sub 60} fullerene fusion from 90 to near 0 eV. 16 refs., 4 figs., 2 tabs.