Nuclear and Radiation Chemical Approaches to Fullerene Science

Sir Harold W. Kroto, FRS Although the discovery of C is now almost 15 years old and the extraction occurred 60 nearly ten years ago it is amazing that the range of spin-off research still seems to expand without limits. The birth of the Fullerenes has spawned fascinating research programmes in almost every area of chemistry and physics and this monograph explores a particularly interesting and important area - the behaviour of these pure carbon cages in the presence of high-energy radiation. The C molecules must also be in the space 60 between the stars (albeit in quantities too small to detect at this time) as the conditions in the atmospheres of some carbon stars appear to be almost identical to the plasmas generated in the Kratschmer-Huffman system for making C . The conditions in space 60 are very varied as it is pervaded by a plethora of high-energy particles (photons, cosmic rays, etc. ) and the chapters in this book discuss, among other things, the response of C 60 and various derivatives to probing by a range of high-energy particles. Various fullerenes and fullerene salts have been examined by positron annihilation techniques, revealing details of their electronic and structural properties as well as phase transition behaviour. Muons have been implanted to enable f. lSR techniques to probe with high sensitivity the endohedral electronic structures of fullerenes including those in superconducting systems.