321
See also: August Kekulé 160–65 ■ Linus Pauling 254–59
FUNDAMENTAL BUILDING BLOCKS
atoms, each bonded to three others
in such a way that all the faces of
the polyhedron are either pentagons
or hexagons. C 70 is more like a
football; it has an extra ring of
carbon atoms around its equator.
Both C 70 and C 60 reminded
Kroto of the futuristic geodesic
domes designed by American
architect Buckminster Fuller,
so he named the compounds
buckminsterfullerene, but they are
also called buckyballs, or fullerenes.
Properties of buckeyballs
The team found that the C 60
compound was stable and could
be heated to high temperatures
without decomposing. It turned
into a gas at about 1,202° F (650° C).
It was odorless, and was insoluble
in water, but slightly soluble in
organic solvents. The buckyball is
also one of the largest objects ever
found to exhibit the properties
both of a particle and of a wave.
In 1999, Austrian researchers sent
molecules of C 60 through narrow
slits and observed the interference
pattern of wavelike behavior.
Solid C 60 is as soft as graphite,
but when highly compressed, it
changes into a superhard form of
diamond. The soccer ball, it seems,
can withstand a lot of pressure.
Pure C 60 is a semiconductor
of electricity, meaning that its
conductivity is between that of
an insulator and a conductor. But
when atoms of alkali metals such
as sodium or potassium are added
to it, it becomes a conductor,
and even a superconductor at
low temperatures, conducting
electricity with no resistance at all.
C 60 also undergoes a wide
variety of chemical reactions,
resulting in huge numbers of
products (chemical substances)
whose properties are still
being studied.The new world of nano
Although C 60 was the first of these
molecules to be studied, its
discovery has led to an entire new
branch of chemistry—the study
of fullerenes. Nanotubes have been
made—cylindrical fullerenes, only
a few nanometers wide, but up to
several millimeters long. They
are good conductors of heat and
electricity, chemically inactive, and
enormously strong, which makes
them hugely useful for engineering.
There are many others that
are being studied for everything
from electrical properties to
medical treatments for cancer to
HIV. The latest spin-off from the
fullerenes is graphene, a flat sheet
of carbon atoms, like a single layer
of graphite. This substance has
remarkable properties that are
being hotly studied. ■Each carbon atom of a C 60 molecule
bonds to three others. The molecule
has 32 faces in total, 12 of which are
pentagons and 20 hexagons, forming
a distinctive, soccer-ball shape.Harry Kroto
Harold Walter Krotoschiner
was born in Cambridgeshire,
England, in 1939. Fascinated
by the toy building set
Meccano, he chose to study
chemistry, and became a
professor at Sussex University
in 1975. He was interested in
looking into space for
compounds with multiple
carbon-carbon bonds, such as
H-C≡C-C≡C-C≡N, and found
evidence using spectroscopy
(studying the interaction
between matter and radiated
energy). When he heard of the
laser spectroscopy work of
Richard Smalley and Robert
Curl at Rice University, he
joined them in Texas, and
together they discovered C^60.
Since 2004, Kroto has worked
on nanotechnology at Florida
State University.
In 1995, he set up the
Vega Science Trust to make
science movies for education
and training. They are freely
available on the Internet at
http://www.vega.org.uk.Key works1981 The Spectra of
Interstellar Molecules
1985 60:Buckminsterfullerene
(with Heath, O’Brien, Curl,
and Smalley)