Bucklyball creation, STM
Atomic images of the inside of a nanotube show the formation of fullerenes, their reduction to C-60 buckyballs, and their dispersion when heated beyond that point. The images were taken by a transmission electron microscope. Sandia researcher Jianyu Huang used a TEM-STM microscope to image buckyball births. Huang was studying flaws in nanotube durability when he had heated a 10-nanometer-diameter multiwalled carbon nanotube to approximately 2,000 degrees Celsius. What he saw was the exterior shells of giant fullerenes form from peelings within the nanotube. High-resolution 2-D images of the process taken by a CCD camera attached to the microscope showed the fullerenes reducing in diameter, linearly with time, until the structures became the size of C-60, the smallest arrangement of carbon atoms that form the soccerball shape.
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Keywords: 2007, birth, bucklyball, buckminster, buckminsterfullerene, buckyball, c60, carbon, chemistry, creation, electron, fullerene, fullerenes, laboratory, microscope, nanotubes, national, research, researcher, sandia, scanning, science, snl, stm, structure, technology, tem, transmission
