Retrosynthetic analysis of fullerene C-60: Structure, stereochemistry, and calculated stability of C-30 fragments

The total number of possible retrosynthetic bisections Of C-60 leads to nine different isometric C-30 fragments. These molecules include five chiral units, four of which derive from partitions corresponding to four distinct "Coupes du Roi". The energies, curvatures, and homodesmotic stabilization energies of the C-30 fragments are evaluated at the ab initio 6-31G level.