Multishell fullerenes were foreseen by Kroto et al.1 as early as in 1988,i.e.shortly after his pioneering discovery of the basic buckminster fullerene C_(60) 2.Unlike classical fullerenes,which have a cage structure and are known to have been synthesized in a variety of sizes ,ultishell fullerenes have a cage-inside-cage concentric structure such as double-shell C_(60)@C_(240) or triple-shell C_(60)@C_(240)C_(560).Multishell fullerenes are the smallest among other multishell carbonclusters such as bigger,graphitic onion3,4 or multishell nanotubes4,5.The first observation of severaldouble-shell and tripleshell molecules was however reporte donly recently 6,7.In Refs.6,7,the double-shell C_(60)@C_(240),double-shell C_(240)@C-(560) and triple-sell C_(80)@C_(240)@C-(560) were found in theproducts of 3000degC high temperautre treatment of laser pyrolysis carbon blacks.The content of multishell fullerenes was less than 0.01,while most of the material was dominated by hollow graphitic particles of approx20 nm size andordinary,single-shell fullerenes.
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