  Tight binding molecular dynamics simulations, with a non orthogonal basis
set, are performed to study the fragmentation of carbon fullerenes doped with
up to six silicon atoms. Both substitutional and adsorbed cases are considered.
The fragmentation process is simulated starting from the equilibrium
configuration in each case and imposing a high initial temperature to the
atoms. Kinetic energy quickly converts into potential energy, so that the
system oscillates for some picoseconds and eventually breaks up. The most
probable first event for substituted fullerenes is the ejection of a C2
molecule, another very frequent event being that one Si atom goes to an
adsorbed position. Adsorbed Si clusters tend to desorb as a whole when they
have four or more atoms, while the smaller ones tend to dissociate and
sometimes interchange positions with the C atoms. These results are compared
with experimental information from mass abundance spectroscopy and the products
of photofragmentation.
