The Nobel Prize in Chemistry 1996 - for the discovery of fullerenes
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| Audience/Grade: | College Freshman - Continuing Education |
| Discipline(s): |
Chemical, Biochemical, Biomolecular Engineering Chemistry |
| Special Topic(s): |
History of Technology |
| Learning Resource Type: | Community - Award/Recognition/Scholarship |
| Media Type: | WWW |
| Author(s): | Nobel Prize Org |
| Description: | "New forms of the element carbon - called fullerenes - in which the atoms are arranged in closed shells was discovered in 1985 by Robert F. Curl, Harold W. Kroto and Richard E. Smalley. The number of carbon atoms in the shell can vary, and for this reason numerous new carbon structures have become known. Formerly, six crystalline forms of the element carbon were known, namely two kinds of graphite, two kinds of diamond, chaoit and carbon(VI). The latter two were discovered in 1968 and 1972. Fullerenes are formed when vaporised carbon condenses in an atmosphere of inert gas. The gaseous carbon is obtained e.g. by directing an intense pulse of laser light at a carbon surface. The released carbon atoms are mixed with a stream of helium gas and combine to form clusters of some few up to hundreds of atoms. The gas is then led into a vacuum chamber where it expands and is cooled to some degrees above absolute zero. The carbon clusters can then be analysed with mass spectrometry. Curl, Kroto and Smalley performed this experiment together with graduate students J.R. Heath and S.C. OBrien during a period of eleven days in 1985. By fine-tuning the experiment they were able in particular to produce clusters with 60 carbon atoms and clusters with 70. Clusters of 60 carbon atoms, C60, were the most abundant. They found high stability in C60, which suggested a molecular structure of great symmetry. It was suggested that C60 could be a "truncated icosahedron cage", a polyhedron with 20 hexagonal (6-angled) surfaces and 12 pentagonal (5-angled) surfaces. The pattern of a European football has exactly this structure, as does the geodetic dome designed by the American architect R. Buckminster Fuller for the 1967 Montreal World Exhibition. The researchers named the newly-discovered structure buckminsterfullerene after him." |
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| Usage Tip | |
| Use of Resource: | historical reference |
| Difficulty: | Easy |
| Interactivity Level: | Very Low |
| Version Info | |
| Publication Date: | October 1996 |
| Platform/Format: | WWW |
| Cost: | Free |
| Download URL: | http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/chemistry/laureates/1996/ |
| Metadata: | IEEE LOM Record |
| Collection: |
NEEDS
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