What are Buckyball Light Bulbs?
Author: Kathy White What? You have never heard of a buckyball light bulb? You have never heard of a buckyball, you say? Well, buckyballs just may be the next chemical in light emitting devices for use in products from cell phone displays to automobile bumpers. First, a buckyball is an organic molecule consisting of sixty carbon atoms bound together in the form of a soccer ball. The figure below is a molecular model of a buckyball, named for R. Buckminster Fuller. Buckyballs are a part of a larger class of organic molecules called fullerenes in which the carbon atoms are arranged in the form of a closed, hollow sphere. Buckyballs were first synthesized in 1985 as the result of the vaporization of graphite with a laser and have been more recently found to occur naturally as the result of lightning strikes. Fullerenes have been used experimentally as superconductors and to produce tiny diamonds and thin diamond films. Scientists once thought buckyballs (C60) were very efficient at quenchi
