Bucky Balls

This is the elusive third allotrope of carbon. In 1985 it was found that a third stable allotrope of carbon exists. This was isolated and now a lot of research is being done on it. The structure of fullerens is a sort of closed cage type structure, kind of like a football. (See below.)

There are many forms of these buckyballs (Fullerenes), the well known is the C₆₀ molecule. This is more commonly known as Buckminster Fullerene. It was named after an American architect-engineer F. Buckminster Fuller, he was best known for designing hemispherical geodesic domes, consisting on hexagonal and pentagonal faces. (See below)

Do you notice the similarity between the two above pictures?

How is it extracted?

It would be very unusual to find any of this naturally, it tends to be produced synthetically in the lab. Large scale production of fullerenes can be acheived by vaporization of graphite in an electric arc or in a plasma discharge. This produces a mixture of fullerenes, these can somtimes contain more than 200 carbon atoms. Separation is usually done by dissolving the products in a solvent, and extracting them from there. in 1994 the price of buckminsterfullerine was $1250 a gram, but as techniques for production and purification increase this price should drop dramatically.

The structure of Bucky Balls

As mentioned and shown above the basic structures of these molecules are like footballs. A combination of hexagons and pentagons is used to make the closed cage structure. The diagrams below show (Left) a highlighted hexagon in the structure and (Right) a highlighted pentagon in the structure.

Hexagon

Pentagon

How is it used?

The main application for this new material so far has been research, but scientists are researching into what it can be used for. Scientists beleive fullerenes will find important applications in semiconductors, superconductors, lubricants, catalysts and in batteries.

Watch this space

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