Determination of sulfur as an impurity in commercial C60, fullerene soot and sublimed C60 polycrystals by INAA

Abstract

By using instrumental neutron activation analysis (INAA) it has been shown that commercial C₆₀ products contain considerable amounts of sulfur impurity. This element could be found in all C₆₀ samples of three main producers which, in fact, necessitated to study the capabilities of the INAA sulfur determination in more detail. Although only one sample did contain a surprisingly high sulfur amount of about 8%, even the sublimed C₆₀ sample showed a sulfur content of about 0.02%.