Magic and hot giant fullerenes formed inside ion irradiated weakly bound C60 clusters

International audienceWe find that the most stable fullerene isomers, C70–C94, form efficiently in close-to central collisions between keV atomic ions and weakly bound clusters of more than 15 C60-molecules. We observe extraordinarily high yields of C70 and marked preferences for C78 and C84. Larger even-size carbon molecules, C96–C180, follow a smooth log-normal (statistical) intensity distribution. Measurements of kinetic energies indicate that C70–C94 mainly are formed by coalescence reactions between small carbon molecules and C60, while Cn with n≥96 are due to self-assembly (of small molecules) and shrinking hot giant fullerenes