What are fullerenes made of?
Fullerenes are a family of carbon allotropes, composed only of carbon. The molecular structure of C60 is that of a truncated icosahedron, which resembles a soccer ball made of 20 hexagons and 12 pentagons, with a carbon atom at the vertices of each polygon, and a bond along the edge of each polygon. Fullerene is named after Richard Buckminster Fuller, a noted architectural modeler who popularized the geodesic dome. The carbon shows various characters by the bond structure. Graphite: Flat structure and carbon atoms are located in a honeycomb-like structure. Diamond: Each carbon atom is tetrahedrally bonded to 4 others creating a 3-dimentional network.
