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Call it buckminsterfullerenes, fullerenes, or buckyballs. It's a new cage-like form of carbon that has professors of chemistry and physics in a research frenzy from Tokyo to Heidelberg.
Unlike the other two--diamond and graphite--this new carbon form is composed of spherical molecules, with no dangling ends eager to unite with a contaminant like hydrogen. Add to that the unique shape just begging to be filled and the relative ease of production, and it is hardly surprising that university researchers are excited.
Worldwide, the published scientific literature on the topic is expanding by at least five papers per day. Though not commercialized yet, samples can be bought or easily made, and the possibilities seem to be endless, says James C. Withers, CEO of Materials & Electrochemical Research Corp. (MER), Tucson. His firm supplies research quantities of the black powder for $450 for one gram, $150 a gram for 100 grams or more, and even less when MER's new production equipment goes on line later this year.
His customer-scientists are buying more than carbon in a uniquely shaped molecule. They are buying a building block for new uses as well as new properties for today's uses of carbon. How fast the buckyball boom proceeds depends on how well scientists understand the implications of the shape. The C60 molecule is soccerball-like with 12 pentagons and 20 hexagons forming the outside surface of a hollow sphere. A carbon atom resides at each of the 60 corners of the structure; hence the nomenclature of C60 for a buckyball molecule containing 60 atoms. Buckyballs with different numbers of atoms exist, but only 60 will result in a shape that is perfectly spherical. C70, for example, is somewhat elongated, more like a rugby ball.
The names "soccerene" and "ballene" were considered for the molecule, but buckminsterfullerene was selected when it was noted that C60 exactly mimics the geodesic domes of Buckminster Fuller. The others are called simply fullerenes.
Like Mr. Fuller's creation, C60 is exceptionally strong, with a remarkable resistance to compression. Research on compressibility suggests that the individual buckyball molecule is more than twice as resistant to pressure as the corresponding single diamond structure, says Rodney Ruoff, a postdoctoral fellow at IBM Corp.'s Thomas J. Watson Research Center, Yorktown Heights, N....