Discovery Of Fullerene

The discovery of fullerene could now be considered as one of the most important discoveries of modern science when the vastness of its resultant applications is taken into consideration as can be seen with the wide applications of carbon nanotube which is one of several derivatives of the C60 carbon molecule.

The discovery of C60 is a wonderful example of serendipity: unexpected discovery. None of the researchers involved had set out to “discover” the fullerene, also known as C60 because it is a molecule made up of 60 carbon atoms. The investigations would be described as “blue sky research” or “basic science” — research that has no immediate practical application, but is interesting from a scientific point of view, and may result in useful products some time in the future. Sadly, this type of research can be found less and less in today’s academic institutions, where most activities are funded only if they are “relevant” or “applied”.

Carbon is one of the commonest substances on Earth and it is widely distributed in nature. All life is carbon-based, and this gives rise to the description of the chemistry of carbon compounds as Organic. Carbon was probably the first element that man was aware of since it is produced in the form for charcoal from burned wood. Charcoal, used in early cave painting and by the artists today, consists of very small crystals of graphite, one of two forms of carbon.1 The other form is diamond, which is especially famous for its hardness and its high dispersion of light. These properties make diamond valuable in jewel industry as well as in other industrial applications. Carbon is the only element that gives name to two scientific journals, Carbon and Tanso.2 Until the late twentieth century, graphite and diamond were the only known allotropes of carbon.

Paradigms are sets of assumptions underlying science. They tend to work well in an established field, where they help further discoveries by giving scientists a base of knowledge upon which to develop research and new hypotheses. But when new areas emerge or scientific revolutions are about to take place the paradigms may be overturned, often by young researchers. The central paradigm that was toppled by the discovery of the fullerene was the view that carbon exists in only two principal forms: graphite and diamond.

Fullerenes were first discovered in 1985 in an apparatus designed by Prof. Rick Smalley to produce atomic clusters of the non-volatile element. Professor Kroto, from University of Sussex, UK, met Professor Curl, from Rice University, at a conference on molecular structure in Austin, Texas. Kroto went back to Houston with Curl, who introduced him to Smalley and showed him around the lab. They arranged to examine a special kind of carbon produced in a cluster beam apparatus of Smalley. They soon reproduced the earlier work of Rohlfing and coworkers. What is more important is that research student James Heath, now professor at Cal. Tech., found conditions whereby C60 was formed exclusively, showing it to be a particularly stable species. After discounting various highly improbable structures, they concluded that the molecule must be a cage, and Smalley succeeded in building it out of his paper and tape. The paper including describing this work was submitted to Nature, on September 12th, 1985.3 They named C60 as Buckminsterfullerene, because of the similarity of the structure to be geodesic structures widely credited to R. Buckminster Fuller. Because of this work, Kroto, Smalley, and Curl were awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1996.