English: Buckyball fullerines; Buckyballs; Carbon fullerines; Carbon nanotubes; Carbon 60; Fullerene tubes.
Clades:
Cyclical organics;
Organics;
Minerals;
Kingdoms.
Use: fullerene tubes for fibers, cables; in nanotechnology, electronics, optics; extraordinary strength at low weight; as holding cages in medicine.
MineralogyFullerene molecules, both balls and tubes, are stable and strong.
Buckyballs are the most widely occuring form, consisting of 60 carbon atoms arranged by pentagons and hexagons into a hollow molecular cage one-billionth of a meter wide. It resembles a soccer ball with a carbon atom at the vertices of each polygon and a poly-valent bond along each polygon edge. Buckyballs, Carbon 60, are chemically inert like noble gasses.
Carbon fullerine is formed readily in the right conditions, when there is pure carbon vapour, when not inhibited by hydrogen. This can happen a star undergoes a thermal pulse and expels it's outer envelope, leaving a carbon rich and hydrogen-poor environment in the middle of the star.
Fullerenes can grow quite complex, with cages holding cages, holding cages, like layers of an onion. They can also form cages with a larger number of carbon atoms, C70 is an often occurring alternative form. Fullerenes are present in soot, especially when produced in the very high temperature of a carbon arc, and in an atmosphere rich of helium. they are found in piggy-backing meteorites, and in certain regions of space. They are produced in laser vaporization cluster beam apparatus;
LiteratureCami, J., Bernard-Salas, J., Peeters, E., & Malek, S. (2010). Detection of C60 and C70 in a Young Planetary Nebula
Science DOI: 10.1126/science.1192035