Image potential of C60: A density functional theory calculation

The authors investigated the image potential of C60 with a composite quantum chemistry method. The image potential is found to be almost isotropic. The image potential of isolated C60 is similar to that of an isolated ideal metal sphere with the radius of C60, while the image potential of grounded C60 is significantly different from that of a grounded ideal metal sphere. At a distance of 1.6 nm from the grounded C60, the image electric force exhibits a knee point. This phenomenon is attributed to the correlation between the testing electron and electronic structure of C60 and to the electron confinement in small systems.