Diffuse scattering from fullerenes

Fullerene solids exhibit textbook examples of orientational freezing transitions, i.e. structural transitions from a high temperature phase, where the molecules undergo rapid reorientation, to a low temperature phase where the molecules are locked-in into discrete orientations. In general, even low temperature phases are not completely ordered because of frozen-in orientational disorder, partly also because of a high density of stacking faults. Diffuse scattering has been used extensively to characterize both dynamic and static disorder in fullerene solids. A review is given on the experimental results as well as on the various techniques employed to analyze the data.