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A fullerene is a molecule of carbon in the form of a hollow sphere, ellipsoid, tube, and many other shapes. Spherical fullerenes are also called Buckminsterfullerene (buckyballs), and they resemble the balls used in football (soccer). Cylindrical ones are called carbon nanotubes or buckytubes. Fullerenes are similar in structure to graphite, which is composed of stacked graphene sheets of linked hexagonal rings; but they may also contain pentagonal (or sometimes heptagonal) rings.〔("Fullerene" ), ''Encyclopædia Britannica'' on-line〕 The first fullerene molecule to be discovered, and the family's namesake, buckminsterfullerene (C60), was prepared in 1985 by Richard Smalley, Robert Curl, James Heath, Sean O'Brien, and Harold Kroto at Rice University. The name was a homage to Buckminster Fuller, whose geodesic domes it resembles. The structure was also identified some five years earlier by Sumio Iijima, from an electron microscope image, where it formed the core of a "bucky onion". Fullerenes have since been found to occur in nature.〔 More recently, fullerenes have been detected in outer space. According to astronomer Letizia Stanghellini, "It’s possible that buckyballs from outer space provided seeds for life on Earth." The discovery of fullerenes greatly expanded the number of known carbon allotropes, which until recently were limited to graphite, diamond, and amorphous carbon such as soot and charcoal. Buckyballs and buckytubes have been the subject of intense research, both for their unique chemistry and for their technological applications, especially in materials science, electronics, and nanotechnology. ==History== The icosahedral C60H60 cage was mentioned in 1965 as a possible topological structure. Eiji Osawa of Toyohashi University of Technology predicted the existence of C60 in 1970. He noticed that the structure of a corannulene molecule was a subset of a Association football shape, and he hypothesised that a full ball shape could also exist. Japanese scientific journals reported his idea, but it did not reach Europe or the Americas. Also in 1970, R. W. Henson (then of the Atomic Energy Research Establishment) proposed the structure and made a model of C60. Unfortunately, the evidence for this new form of carbon was very weak and was not accepted, even by his colleagues. The results were never published but were acknowledged in ''Carbon'' in 1999.〔 〕〔 (【引用サイトリンク】first = R.W. )〕 Independently from Henson, in 1973 a group of scientists from the USSR, directed by Prof. Bochvar, made a quantum-chemical analysis of the stability of C60 and calculated its electronic structure. As in the previous cases, the scientific community did not accept the theoretical prediction. The paper was published in 1973 in ''Proceedings of the USSR Academy of Sciences'' (in Russian).〔 〕 In mass spectrometry, discrete peaks appeared corresponding to molecules with the exact mass of sixty or seventy or more carbon atoms. In 1985, Harold Kroto (then of the University of Sussex), James R. Heath, Sean O'Brien, Robert Curl and Richard Smalley, from Rice University, discovered C60, and shortly thereafter came to discover the fullerenes.〔 〕 Kroto, Curl, and Smalley were awarded the 1996 Nobel Prize in Chemistry〔(【引用サイトリンク】url=http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/chemistry/laureates/1996/ )〕 for their roles in the discovery of this class of molecules. C60 and other fullerenes were later noticed occurring outside the laboratory (for example, in normal candle-soot). By 1991, it was relatively easy to produce gram-sized samples of fullerene powder using the techniques of Donald Huffman, Wolfgang Krätschmer and Konstantinos Fostiropoulos. Fullerene purification remains a challenge to chemists and to a large extent determines fullerene prices. So-called endohedral fullerenes have ions or small molecules incorporated inside the cage atoms. Fullerene is an unusual reactant in many organic reactions such as the Bingel reaction discovered in 1993. Carbon nanotubes were first discovered and synthesized in 1991.〔 〕 Minute quantities of the fullerenes, in the form of C60, C70, C76, C82 and C84 molecules, are produced in nature, hidden in soot and formed by lightning discharges in the atmosphere.〔 (【引用サイトリンク】url = http://invsee.asu.edu/nmodules/Carbonmod/everywhere.html )〕 In 1992, fullerenes were found in a family of minerals known as Shungites in Karelia, Russia.〔 〕 In 2010, fullerenes (C60) have been discovered in a cloud of cosmic dust surrounding a distant star 6500 light years away. Using NASA's Spitzer infrared telescope the scientists spotted the molecules' unmistakable infrared signature. Sir Harry Kroto, who shared the 1996 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for the discovery of buckyballs commented: "This most exciting breakthrough provides convincing evidence that the buckyball has, as I long suspected, existed since time immemorial in the dark recesses of our galaxy."〔(Stars reveal carbon 'spaceballs' ), BBC, 22 July 2010.〕 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Fullerene」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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