Fullerenes PDF

FULLERENES  Spheres of carbon Allotrope of carbon It is crystalline Different types C60, C70,etc Most stable is C60 Hollow ball of Carbon 20 hexagonal phases, 12 pentagonal phases, 60 vertices Each C atom is connected to 3 Carbon atoms Average C-C bond length is 1.44 A Uses:...

FULLERENES  Spheres of carbon Allotrope of carbon It is crystalline Different types C60, C70,etc Most stable is C60 Hollow ball of Carbon 20 hexagonal phases, 12 pentagonal phases, 60 vertices Each C atom is connected to 3 Carbon atoms Average C-C bond length is 1.44 A Uses: Act as conductors- synthesis of nanotubes, nanowires Adsorbent for gases As lubricants Used in cosmetics as antioxidants As catalysts  mproving medical imaging and drug delivery with buckyballs: Another potential use of buckyballs in medicine involves delivering elements for medica maging. When you make a buckyball, you vaporize carbon. If you vaporize a metal along with the carbon, buckyballs conveniently form around the metal atoms. Fast-forward to he metal gadolinium, which is used for medical imaging, but with gadolinium there's a danger that some of the metal can remain in a body and cause damage. By containing hese potentially harmful metal atoms in a buckyball, researchers hope to be able to lush the metal-enclosed-in-a-buckyball combination completely from the body after i has accomplished its medical imaging task, rather than leaving it there where it could be absorbed into tissue. Another use of buckyballs is to deliver drugs directly to infected regions of the body. I urns out that such regions have pH levels that differ from the pH of the healthy bits (pH measures the acidity of a solution). Researchers hope to functionalize a buckyball by bonding it to molecules that react to changes in pH, so the drug is only released at the nfected area. One other reason buckyballs are useful for drug delivery is that they are mall enough to move around inside the body quite easily. Buckyballs at work everywhere Here's a quick rundown of various efforts that are going on today to develop products using the capabilities of buckyballs. When these products will become available is anybody's guess at this point, but it depends in part on our ability to produce low-cost buckyballs. Dupont and Exxon are using buckyballs to develop stronger polymers. Additional buckyball-based antioxidant type drugs are being developed or tested. For example, anti-aging or anti-wrinkle creams are being developed by Mitsubishi, Taiwan University is testing a buckyball-based drug to fight arteriosclerosis, and C Sixty is working on both burn creams and an HIV drug. These companies are looking at two ways of doing this: by integrating the buckyballs in the polymer with chemical bonding, or by simply tossing buckyballs into the polymer and embedding them there. Additional buckyball-based antioxidant type drugs are being developed or tested. For example, anti-aging or anti-wrinkle creams are being developed by Mitsubishi Taiwan University is testing a buckyball-based drug to fight arteriosclerosis, and C Sixty is working on both burn creams and an HIV drug. Sony is developing more efficient fuel cell membranes using buckyballs. Siemens has developed a buckyball-based light detector. Seagate is using buckyballs to develop diamond-hard coatings for computer disk drives.