On the stable forms of carbon clusters produced in low pressure sputtering discharge

Abstract : Molecular Dynamics (MD) simulation was used to identify the stable structures of carbon clusters Cn (10<=n<=60). The adopted a simulated annealing procedure randomly distributed in the phase-space and submitted to a thermal cycle involving a heating ramp, a relaxation period and cooling phase. We found that for neutral carbon cluster size n<20, the most stable structure of the cluster is linear or monocyclic. For cluster size n>=20, grahene and fullerene structures are obtained to be the most stable structures involved in dusty plasmas.