Fullerenes and Carbon Based Materials

This special issue of Carbon, a collection of reviewed papers, was presented at Symposium A, Fullerenes and Carbon Based Materials at the combined 1997 International Conference on Applied Materials/European Materials Research Society Spring meeting (ICAM'97/E-MRS'97) held in Strasbourg (France) from 16-20 June 1997.

140 presentations were given at the conference in seven different sessions. The most extensively addressed research fields were carbon materials in general, diamond-like carbon, pristine, polymeric and endohedral fullerenes, nanotubes, and carbonitrides.

Of accepted manuscripts, the largest number of contributions is dedicated to carbon materials in general and to fullerenes. Highlights in the former are the discussions on hydrogen-free carbons and on hard carbon coatings. In the fullerenes group many new results on polymeric structures and on endohedrally-doped higher fullerenes are reported.

The field of carbon nanotubes is strongly represented with reports on new techniques for the production of the tubes and where the analyses by scanning probe microscopy and light scattering are the central problems. Carbonitrides as well as a few contributions from related molecular materials like cubanes or oligophenylenes are included.

The symposium proved to be a valuable venue where new scientific and technological problems in the field of new materials were reported.

Selected papers: New carbon materials for research and technology (P. Scharff). Fractal carbon clusters: modelling new forms of carbon (H.E. Roman et al.). Spongy carbon nanobeads—a new material (M. Sharon et al.). Laser photolysis of liquid benzene and hexafluorobenzene: graphitic and polymeric carbon formation at ambient temperature (M. Urbanová et al.). Strutures of soot generated by laser induced pyrolysis of metal–graphite composite targets (E. Muñoz et al.). Brillouin scattering of cluster-assembled carbon films (C.E. Bottani et al.). The static waves of atomic displacements accumulation effect, inside a zone of elastic to plastic transformation (A.A. Ovcharov, M.D. Starostenkov). UV-irradiation studies on C70 clusters in mixed solvents (J.A. Nisha et al.). Field induced diffusion of gold and related phase transformations in fullerenes C60 and C70 (N. Kirova et al.). Strutures and physical properties of superhard and ultrahard 3D polymerized fullerites created from solid C60 by high pressure high temperature treatment. Carbon single wall nanotubes: elaboration and properties (P. Bernier et al.). Carbon nanotubes: the solar approach (D. Laplaze et al.). Elastic deformation of a carbon nanotube adsorbed on a stepped surface (Ph. Lambin et al.). Carbon crooked nanotube layers of polyethylene: synthesis, structure and electron emission (L.A. Chernozatonskii et al.). Electron swarming in carbon nanostructures (S.A.Beznosjuk et al.). Fullernes and nanotubes with non-positive Gaussian curvature (H. Terrones, M. Terrones). Characterisation of carbon nitride thin films prepared by reactive magnetron sputtering (A. Ferńandez et al.). Properties and preparation conditions of carbon nitride thin films deposited by laser CVD (F. Falk et al.)