Truncated icosahedral carbon cluster

The first publication of which I am aware that postulates the existence of a truncated icosahedral carbon cluster is a book by Yoshida and Osawa (70) that was published in 1971. The first Hiickel calculation for BMF-60 was carried out by Bochvar and Gal pern (71) and reported in 1973. This work is amplified by additional examples of carbon polyhedrons that were given in a review (72) published in 1984 on existing and hypothetical crystalline modifications of carbon. Hiickel calculations employing a graphical theoretical approach were performed by Davidson (73) for several polyhedrons, including BMF-60, and were reported in 1981. 

At present the simplest carbon cluster to prepare is the buckminsterfullerene C60, the geometry of which is classified as truncated icosahedral , which belongs to the icosahedral symmetry group, Ih. As a consequence, the frontier orbitals of C60 consist of a full pentadegene-rate HOMO (hu) and two triply degenerate LUMOs (tiu and tlg), Figure 13. 

Carbon clusters have been the focus of many experimental studies using a variety of techniques [1-4]. Recently, Kroto, Heath, O Brien, Curl and Smalley [5] have obtained a remarkably stable cluster containing 60 carbon atoms and have proposed a highly symmetric truncated icosahedral structure ( football or soccerball like) for this molecule [5,6]. These authors have proposed the name Buckminster-fuUerene for this unusual structure of Cgg-... 

There is at present much interest in large cage (cluster) molecules based on carbon [62]. The best known of these is the established Cgo molecule (fullerene) which has exceptional stability and has the highly symmetrical truncated icosahedral structure depicted in Figure 4.7. Derivatives of C o, and carbon nanotubes, currently attract much interest because of their exceptional electrical, mechanical and structural properties. Phosphorus analogues may exist (P is used as a co-catalyst for growing of carbon nanotubes [63,64]). 

Fig. 4.20. Schema of the truncated icosahedral structure expected for the carbon backbone in the cluster C6o...

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