Materials science buckminsterfullerene

Rubidium compounds are important in a number of areas of materials science, as catalysts for ammonia synthesis and oxidation of methane, as a component of some glasses and as a dopant metal in buckminsterfullerene (Ceo) causing it to become superconducting at 28 K. 

In the last 20 years, many headline-stealing discoveries have been made in the area of solid state science. For example, Nobel prizes have been awarded to two physicists, Bednorz and Muller, for their work in superconductors and to three chemists. Curl, Kroto and Smalley, for their work on buckminsterfullerenes. Many of these discoveries lie on the boundaries between chemistry, physics and materials science. Therefore, they have required collaboration across these traditional borders to develop the new materials. This chapter selects five areas in which significant advances have been made relatively recently. 

Buckminsterfullerene is a superb modem example of the value of fundamental research to science in general and to applied areas in particular. Buckminsterfullerene was discovered by chemists doing experiments trying to determine the role of carbon in space and in the distant stars. The result was dynamic new paths in chemistry, physics, and materials science here on earth. 

The discovery that C6o (buckminsterfullerene) self-assembles from a condensing chaotic plasma causes us to look back and recognize certain misconceptions that existed over the structure of graphite and other similarly layered materials. The discovery has not only fundamentally changed our understanding of synthetic carbon chemistry, but has also opened up whole new and exciting possibilities in materials science - in particular at nanoscale dimensions. Furthermore, this new perspective also rationalizes numerous properties of bulk graphite that have hitherto been known but unexplained. 

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