Chemical Physics Letters, Vol.446, No.1-3, 56-58, 2007
Instability of the doped high pressure rhombohedral C-60 polymer structure
Despite the theoretical prediction of an interesting insulator-to-metal transition in rhombohedral C-60 polymers (Rh-C-60) upon electron doping, very few attempts have been performed up to now to actually intercalate it with donors. In this Letter we show that Rh-C-60 converts to the monomer fcc C-60 around 450 K; this explains the failure of previous doping attempts which required treatments at higher temperatures. Here we performed the Li doping of Rh-C-60 in solution of liquid ammonia, a low temperature technique which avoids thermal depolymerisation. However, the rhombohedral structure is not retained after intercalation, yielding a monomer alkali-metal doped fulleride. (C) 2007 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.