| Fullerene basics
The most famous member of the family is C60
(Buckminster-Fullerene) which has the geometrical structure of a truncated
icosahedron (the same as a European football). However, it is a VERY small
football - only 1 nm in diameter! There is roughly the same size ratio between
the Earth and a European football as there is between the football and a
fullerene. In 1990 W. Krätschmer, D. Huffman and their two graduate students
L. Lamb and K. Fostiropoulos discovered a very easy method of producing and
purifying macroscopic amounts of fullerenes. Since then the field of fullerene
research has expanded very rapidly. They have found widespread use as model
systems for studying dynamical properties in areas such as atomic and molecular
physics and physical chemistry; they become superconducting at temperatures
higher than any other organic compounds (20-40 K) when doped with alkali metal;
they can be internally doped with other elements to produce so-called
endohedral fullerenes; they have interesting non-linear optical properties and
they can be regarded as quasi-aromatic organic molecules opening up the
possibility of using them as 3D building blocks in macromolecular chemistry,
to name just a few of their exciting properties.
Some general references to the fullerenes and their discovery:
J. Baggot "Perfect Symmetry: the accidental discovery of Buckminsterfullerene" (Oxford University Press, 1994)
H. Aldersey-Williams "The Most Beautiful Molecule : The Discovery of the Buckyball" (J. Wiley & Sons, 1995)
M.S. Dresselhaus, G. Dresselhaus, P.C. Eklund "The Science of Fullerenes and Carbon Nanotubes" (Academic Press, 1996)
A. Hirsch, "The Chemistry of the Fullerenes" (Thieme, 1994)
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