Journal
NATURE CHEMISTRY
Volume 2, Issue 6, Pages 450-453Publisher
NATURE PUBLISHING GROUP
DOI: 10.1038/NCHEM.644
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Funding
- Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council [EP/C545273/1]
- European Science Foundation
- Royal Society
- DFG (German Research Foundation)
- State Baden-Wurttemberg
- DFG within Collaborative Research Centre [(SFB) 569]
- Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council [EP/C545273/1, EP/G005060/1] Funding Source: researchfish
- EPSRC [EP/G005060/1, EP/C545273/1] Funding Source: UKRI
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Although fullerenes can be efficiently generated from graphite in high yield, the route to the formation of these symmetrical and aesthetically pleasing carbon cages from a flat graphene sheet remains a mystery. The most widely accepted mechanisms postulate that the graphene structure dissociates to very small clusters of carbon atoms such as C(2), which subsequently coalesce to form fullerene cages through a series of intermediates. In this Article, aberration-corrected transmission electron microscopy directly visualizes, in real time, a process of fullerene formation from a graphene sheet. Quantum chemical modelling explains four critical steps in a top-down mechanism of fullerene formation: (i) loss of carbon atoms at the edge of graphene, leading to (ii) the formation of pentagons, which (iii) triggers the curving of graphene into a bowl-shaped structure and which (iv) subsequently zips up its open edges to form a closed fullerene structure.
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