A fullerene is a third form of carbon along with graphite and diamond that features unique properties that make it ideal for photo-resists, organic photovoltaics, spin-on carbon hard masks and organic photo detectors. Their discovery in 1985 was rewarded with a Nobel prize in chemistry 10-years later. Their unique geometric shape—similar to Buckminster Fuller’s geodesic dome—led to their being named “Buckminsterfullerenes.”

STRUCTURE:

Fullerene are hollow, pure carbon molecule in which the carbon atom lie at the vertices of polyhedron with 12 pentagonal faces and any number of hexagonal faces.

Each carbon atom bound to three other carbon atoms in a pseudo spherical arrangement consisting of alternating pentagonal and hexagonal rings, in the manner of soccer ball, Hence its nick name is buckyball

Every carbon is equivalent,NMR spectrum of C60 reveals a single line.

Isolation:

Fullerene is beautiful thing, It was found as byproduct of soot formation.

Scrape the inside of chimney and you will get few bucky balls on the finger.

Preparation:

1.The initial efforts the graphite was vaporized with short pulse.high power laser, tobe turned into Fullerene –C60.But this was not practical method for making large quantities.

2.Later the physicists. Kartschmer and D. R. Huffman prepared Fullerene C60 for the first time.

Method :

• An arc was caused between graphite rods to burn them in helium atmosphere

• This resulted in producing the carbon condensate.

• By using an inorganic solvent, the fullerene C60 was isolated

This method gave considerable quantity of Fullerene C60. Later fullerene C50,C70,C76,C78,C84 and C90were also produced .It had amazingly varying properties and ultimately new branch of chemistry emerged for advanced studies .