Decay and fusion as two different mechanisms of stability loss for the (C_20)_2 cluster dimer

Abstract

The thermal stability of the (C_20)_2 cluster dimer consisting of two C_20 fullerenes is examined using a tight-binding approach. Molecular dynamics simulations of the (C_20)_2 dimer at temperatures T = 2000 - 3500 K show that the finite lifetime τof this metastable system is determined by two fundamentally different processes, the decay of one of the C_20 fullerenes and the fusion of two C_20 fullerenes into the C_40 cluster. The activation energies for these processes Ea = 3.4 and 2.7 eV, respectively, as well as their frequency factors, have been determined by analyzing the dependence of τon T.

arXiv commentSlightly modified version of the paper to appear in JETP Lett

References in corpus (2)

• Comment to "Observation of the neutron radiative decay" by R.U. Khafizov et al., published in JETP Letters 83 (2006) 5 (Pis'ma v ZhETF 83 (2006) 7)
• Electron-phonon interaction in the solid form of the smallest fullerene C${}_{20}$

Cited by in corpus (1)

• Structure and Stability of Two-Dimensional Complexes of C_20 Fullerenes