carbon cluster
Alternative Titles: 60-carbon, buckminsterfullerene, buckyball
  • Figure 42: The structure of C60 (buckminsterfullerene). All the carbon atoms are sp2 hybridized, but double bonds are not shown here in the structure for clarity.


    Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc.
  • The structure of buckminsterfullerene (C60).

    Figure 4: The structure of C60, buckminsterfullerene.

    Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc.
  • Two fullerene structuresAn elongated carbon nanotube and a spherical buckminsterfullerene, or “buckyball.”
    Two fullerene structures

    An elongated carbon nanotube and a spherical buckminsterfullerene, or “buckyball.”

    Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc.

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discovery by


American chemist who with Richard E. Smalley and Sir Harold W. Kroto discovered buckminsterfullerene, a spherical form of carbon comprising 60 atoms, in 1985. The discovery opened a new branch of chemistry, and all three men were awarded the 1996 Nobel Prize for Chemistry for their work.


Sir Harold W. Kroto, 2007.
In the 1985 paper describing their work, the discoverers chose the whimsical name buckminsterfullerene for C 60, after the American architect R. Buckminster Fuller, whose geodesic dome designs have a structure similar to that molecule. The discovery of the unique structure of fullerenes, or buckyballs, as this class of carbon compounds came to be known, opened up an entirely new...


American chemist and physicist, who shared the 1996 Nobel Prize for Chemistry with Robert F. Curl, Jr., and Sir Harold W. Kroto for their joint discovery of carbon-60 (C 60, or buckminsterfullerene) and the fullerenes.


During the period 1985–90 Kroto, working with colleagues at the University of Sussex, Brighton, England, used laboratory microwave spectroscopy techniques to analyze the spectra of carbon chains. These measurements later led to the detection, by radioastronomy, of chainlike molecules consisting of 5 to 11 carbon atoms in interstellar gas clouds and in the atmospheres of carbon-rich red...


Examples from biological and mechanical realms illustrate various “orders of magnitude” (powers of 10), from 10−2 metre down to 10−7 metre.
...In 1985 Robert F. Curl, Jr., Harold W. Kroto, and Richard E. Smalley discovered the first fullerene, the third known form of pure carbon (after diamond and graphite). They named their discovery buckminsterfullerene (“buckyball”) for its resemblance to the geodesic domes promoted by the American architect R. Buckminster Fuller. Technically called C 60 for the 60 carbon...

network structure

Still another kind of particularly stable closed shell occurs in clusters sometimes called network structures. The best-known of these is C 60, the 60-atom cluster of carbon atoms. In this cluster the atoms occupy the sites of the 60 equivalent vertices of the soccer ball structure, which can be constructed by cutting off the 12 vertices of the icosahedron to make 12 regular 5-sided...
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