C60 fullerene

Buckminsterfullerene is a type of fullerene with the formula C60. It has a cage-like fused-ring structure (truncated icosahedron) that resembles a soccer ball, made of twenty hexagons and twelve pentagons, with a carbon atom which has one π bond and two single bonds at each vertex of each polygon and a bond along each polygon edge. Buckminsterfullerene is a type of fullerene with the formula C60. It has a cage-like fused-ring structure (truncated icosahedron) that resembles a soccer ball, made of twenty hexagons and twelve pentagons, with a carbon atom which has one π bond and two single bonds at each vertex of each polygon and a bond along each polygon edge. It was first generated in 1984 by Eric Rohlfing, Donald Cox and Andrew Kaldor using a laser to vaporize carbon in a supersonic helium beam. In 1985 their work was repeated by Harold Kroto, James R. Heath, Sean O'Brien, Robert Curl, and Richard Smalley at Rice University, who recognized the structure of C60 as buckminsterfullerine. Kroto, Curl and Smalley were awarded the 1996 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for their roles in the discovery of buckminsterfullerene and the related class of molecules, the fullerenes. Buckminsterfullerene is the most common naturally occurring fullerene. It can be found in small quantities in soot. The molecule has also been detected in deep space. In April 2019, scientists, working with the Hubble Space Telescope, reported the confirmed detection of the large and complex ionized molecules of buckminsterfullerene (C60) in the interstellar medium spaces between the stars. The discoverers of the allotrope named the newfound molecule after Buckminster Fuller, who designed many geodesic dome structures that look similar to C60. This is slightly misleading, however, as Fuller's geodesic domes are constructed only by further dividing hexagons or pentagons into triangles, which are then deformed by moving vertices radially outward to fit the surface of a sphere. Geometrically speaking, buckminsterfullerene is a naturally-occurring example of a Goldberg polyhedron. A common, shortened name for buckminsterfullerene is 'buckyballs'. Theoretical predictions of buckyball molecules appeared in the late 1960s  and early 1970s, but these reports went largely unnoticed. In the early 1970s, the chemistry of unsaturated carbon configurations was studied by a group at the University of Sussex, led by Harry Kroto and David Walton. In the 1980s, Smalley and Curl at Rice University developed experimental technique to generate these substances. They used laser vaporization of a suitable target to produce clusters of atoms. Kroto realized that by using a graphite target, a range of carbon clusters could be studied. Concurrent but unconnected to the Kroto-Smalley work, astrophysicists were working with spectroscopists to study infrared emissions from giant red carbon stars. Smalley and team were able to use a laser vaporization technique to create carbon clusters which could potentially emit infrared at the same wavelength as had been emitted by the red carbon star. Hence, the inspiration came to Smalley and team to use the laser technique on graphite to generate fullerenes. C60 was discovered in 1985 by Robert Curl, Harold Kroto, and Richard Smalley. Using laser evaporation of graphite they found Cn clusters (where n>20 and even) of which the most common were C60 and C70. A solid rotating graphite disk was used as the surface from which carbon was vaporized using a laser beam creating hot plasma that was then passed through a stream of high-density helium gas. The carbon species were subsequently cooled and ionized resulting in the formation of clusters. Clusters ranged in molecular masses, but Kroto and Smalley found predominance in a C60 cluster that could be enhanced further by allowing the plasma to react longer. They also discovered that the C60 molecule formed a cage-like structure, a regular truncated icosahedron. For this discovery Curl, Kroto, and Smalley were awarded the 1996 Nobel Prize in Chemistry. The experimental evidence, a strong peak at 720 atomic mass units, indicated that a carbon molecule with 60 carbon atoms was forming, but provided no structural information. The research group concluded after reactivity experiments, that the most likely structure was a spheroidal molecule. The idea was quickly rationalized as the basis of an icosahedral symmetry closed cage structure. Kroto mentioned geodesic dome structures of the noted futurist and inventor Buckminster Fuller as influences in the naming of this particular substance as buckminsterfullerene.