title: Bilayer vesicles as precursors for spherical fractal aggregates from the self-assembly of a C60-fullerene-dyad in polar solvent.
abstract: Spherical fractal aggregates of approximately 10 microm were formed from a pi-electronic amphiphile, C(60)-didodecyloxybenzene dyad when extracted from THF into water, necessitating a critical dielectric constant epsilon > or =30 in binary THF-water mixtures. Molecular dynamics simulations revealed the unit cluster to such a form involves an aggregation number approximately 90 with predominant soft associative molecular interactions which corroborated the octadecahedral model proposed for the cluster growth.
authors.affiliation: Department of Chemistry, Indian Institute of Technology Madras, Chennai 600036, India.
authors.forename: S Shankara
authors.initials: SS
authors.lastname: Gayathri
authors.forename: Archita
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Patnaik