2000/07/14 by Slava V. Rotkin, Rotkin, Slava V., Robert A. Suris +2
Materials Science · Physics and Astronomy · #Carbon Nanotubes in Composites #FOS: Physical sciences #Graphene research and applications #Graphite, nuclear technology, radiation studies #Materials Science (cond-mat.mtrl-sci) #Statistical Mechanics (cond-mat.stat-mech) #cond-mat.mtrl-sci #cond-mat.stat-mech
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.cond-mat/0007259
4 pages, 2 PS figures
arxiv created 2000/07/14 · openalex publication_date 2000/07/14 · arxiv updated 2009/11/30 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
The energetics of transformation of a planar fragment of a graphite monolayer into a spherical cluster is studied. The path considered is that a flat cluster rolls up into a segment of a spherical shell. The energy landscape of the process is presented. A simple model, formerly invented for calculating the carbon nanocluster formation energy, is used to evaluate the energies of intermediate states. Although the spherical-shell closed cluster has the lowest energy, curving of a plane fragment into a segment has an energy barrier. The barrier height goes to zero for clusters with the number of atoms greater than some N\rm th, for which the cluster size is found analytically.