Résumé : The specific decay mode of hot nuclei surviving fission or fragmentation and leading in the final state to the production of a large residue has been studied in Ar+Au collisions at 60 A MeV. The temperature of these residues has been obtained by analysing the kinematical characteristics (angular and kinetic energy distributions) of the coincident neutrons detected by the DEMON neutron detector. A total cross section of 50 mb has been measured for the production of residues with an initial temperature of 6 MeV or more. This result is compared with the predictions of a microscopic transport model. © 1997 Elsevier Science B.V.