Strongly Localized Image States of Spherical Graphitic Particles

Figure 1

Schematic illustration of a charged particle captured by the image potential and orbiting around a buckyball. The radius of the orbit is determined by the dielectric constant within and surrounding the shell as well as the angular momentum quantum number of the captured particles. For semiconducting shells, the localization is strong and the radius of the stable orbit can be a few nanometers. The localization is weak for metallic shells.