Bilayer vesicles as precursors for spherical fractal aggregates from the self-assembly of a C<inf>60</inf>-fullerene-dyad in polar solvent

Spherical fractal aggregates of ∼10 μm were formed from a π -electronic amphiphile, C60 -didodecyloxybenzene dyad when extracted from THF into water, necessitating a critical dielectric constant ε≥30 in binary THF-water mixtures. Molecular dynamics simulations revealed the unit cluster to such a form involves an aggregation number ∼90 with predominant soft associative molecular interactions which corroborated the octadecahedral model proposed for the cluster growth. © 2006 American Institute of Physics.