Description:

Since the 1985 discovery of the buckyball (a fullerene structure shaped like a geodesic sphere and designated molecule C60), scientists have discovered other fullerene structures such as nanotubes and nanocones.

Named after Renaissance man Buckminster Fuller, inventor of the geodesic dome, fullerenes display a variety of interesting characteristics and behaviors, depending on their geometry, helicity, and type of filling material. They can, for example, behave either like a metal, a semiconductor, or a magnet, and can be very flexible or extremely stiff. These properties open up the possibility of designing nanoscale (on the order of one billionth of a meter) electronic devices to eventually replace traditional silicon-based technology -- and give much higher performance.

The picture above shows a computer simulation of the molecular arrangment of nested carbon nanocones.  They make the perfect Tree for our nano-Christmas!

 Previous Day/Next Day

Please contact the webmaster if you would like to submit an image