Buckyball construction

The following sections discuss many of the major particle types and provide bioconjugation options for the coupling of ligands to the surface of functionalized particles. Some additional nanoparticle constructs, including gold particles, dendrimers, carbon nanotubes, Buckyballs and fullerenes, and quantum dots are discussed more fully elsewhere (see Chapter 7 Chapter 9, Section 10 Chapter 15 and Chapter 24). 

One of the most elegant classes of molecules is that of the fullerenes, which are carbon compounds in the form of hollow spheres, constructed of twelve five-sided faces and different numbers of six-sided faces. The smallest fullerene has thirty-two carbon atoms the larger ones have several hundred carbon atoms. The first fullerene was discovered in 1985, by two Americans, Richard Smalley (1943-) and Robert Curl (1933-), and an English chemist, Harry Kroto (1939-). The fullerene with sixty carbon atoms, C60, has a structure similar to the geodesic dome invented by the architect Buckminster Fuller. In a whimsical tribute, the whole class of substances was named after the American architect, and his whole name was used for C60, buckminsterfullerene, or, as it is cheerfully known, the buckyball. Fullerenes are stable and can trap other atoms or small molecules inside their spheres. We have scarcely begun to discover their potential uses. 

Larger, nonspherical assemblies of carbon atoms have also been prepared, some with a tubular shape. These so-called nanotubes can be viewed as a rolled-up graphite sheet, perhaps capped with half of a buckyball in some cases. Nanotubes have many potential applications. They may be useful in constructing faster and smaller electronic devices because they can be doped to become semiconducting or metallic and they can be made to carry electrical current at higher densities than metals. They can also be spun into incredibly strong fibers. However, before they can reach their true potential, methods to produce them inexpensively must be developed. 

By 1991, experiments with buckyballs led to long strings of the molecules that are tube- or straw-like and are called buckytubes or nanotubes. Many scientists think nanotubes are a fundamental unit for building countless other nanodevices. Nanotubes can be flexed and woven and are being woven into experimental fibers for use in ultralight, bulletproof vests, as one example. Nanotubes are also perfect conductors, and they may be used to construct atomically precise electronic circuitry for more advanced computers and flat panel displays. 

H.2 Construct a model of buckminsterfullerene. "buckyball". according to the directions in the reference in Footnote 2. 

Ceo was trivially named buckminsterfullerene" after R. Buckminster Fuller, the engineer, architect, and philosopher who used similar shapes to construct geodesic domes. Due to their spherical shape, Cgo molecules are sometimes colloquially called buckyballs. Compounds derived from Cgo and related carbon clusters that enclose space (such as C70, which is egg shaped, Cyg, Cg4, and others) are called fullerenes. Even carbon nanotubes are now known some carbon nanotubes are even being used as storage containers to deliver anticancer drugs into cells for chemotherapy applications. 

The ability to image objects on the nanometer scale, combined with the discovery of nanometer-sized elements (buckyballs and nanotubes), has led to a frenzy of research to make nano-sized instruments and devices that will improve human life. Chief among these are storage devices that can put more information into a smaller amount of space and medical devices that allow, for example, the introduction of foreign cells into the human body, the construction of artificial cells, and the construction of nanorobots that may one day be able to navigate within the human body. 

Carbon 60 (C60, Buckyball) is this third form of carbon, discovered in 1985 by Richard Smalley, Harold Kroto, and Robert Curl for which they won the 1996 Nobel Prize in chemistry. It is named as Buckministerfuller to honor the architect of the geodesic dome, Buckminster Puller, because the dome s shell resembles the fullerenes hollow-core construction. Fullerene structure of carbon is face-centered cubic having carbon molecules at the corners and at the center of the faces and belonging to the fullerene family. In the world of symmetry it is definitely a new form of pattern created by the existing symmetry operations. 

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