Eur. Phys. J. B 31, 509-515 (2003)
https://doi.org/10.1140/epjb/e2003-00060-4

Evidence for a solid phase of dodecahedral C₂₀

¹ Department of Chemistry, New Jersey Institute of Technology, Newark, New Jersey 07102, USA
² Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, New Jersey Institute of Technology, Newark, New Jersey 07102, USA
³ Department of Physics, Berea College, Berea, Kentucky 40404, USA
⁴ Department of Materials Science and Istituto Nazionale per la Fisica della Materia, University of Milano-Bicocca, 20125 Milano, Italy
⁵ Center for Solid State Science, Arizona State University, Tempe, Arizona 85287, USA
⁶ Army Research and Engineering Center, Picatinny, New Jersey 07806, USA
⁷ JDS Uniphase Corp, Eatontown, New Jersey 07724, USA
⁸ Department of Materials Science and Engineering, Royal Institute of Technology, 10044 Stockholm, Sweden

Corresponding author: ^a zafar.iqbal@njit.edu

Received: 10 October 2002
Revised: 24 December 2002
Published online: 6 March 2003

Abstract

Evidence is presented for the formation of a solid phase based on the smallest fullerene, C₂₀, in thin diamond-like carbon films deposited by ultraviolet laser ablation from diamond onto nickel substrates at room temperature in the presence of 10^-4 torr of cyclohexane or benzene. Laser desorption mass spectrometry from the films shows the presence of C₂₀, C₂₁ and C₂₂ species, while micro-Raman spectroscopy and electron diffraction from selected particles together with first principle density-functional calculations, indicate a cubic solid with dodecahedral C₂₀ cages as building blocks. Unlike solid C₆₀ and fully protonated C₂₀, which are bound by van der Waals forces, the proposed structure is stabilized by linking of the C₂₀ dodecahedra with bridging carbon atoms at interstitial tetrahedral sites to form a face-centered-cubic lattice with 22 carbon atoms per unit cell.