  We investigate the dimerization and fusion of C60 molecules to form various
C60 dimers when pushed against each other at several inter-molecular distances.
We study the stability of this dimerized C60 molecule based on its binding
strength provided by intramolecular interactions. Tersoff potential, which is
considered to represent intramolecular interactions well, has been used to
calculate potential energy at these distances of separation and for all
possible orientations of the molecules. We observe that several minimum energy
configurations exist at various distances between the C60 molecules. Our
calculation shows that apart from the dumbbell structures, many interesting
composite phases also result, such as fused, peanut and carbon nanotubes of
geometry (5,5) and (10,0) of certain specific length.
