Fullerenes and carbon nanotubes
Can carbon atoms self-assemble into closed cage molecules (fullerenes) and rolled-up cylindrical sheets (nanotubes), and can these exotic carbon forms be produced, understood, and put to practical use?
History and references
Settled in 1991 by Kroto, Curl, Smalley (fullerenes, discovered 1985, Nobel Prize 1996); Iijima (carbon nanotubes, reported 1991).
Ginzburg's problem #9 was fresh when he wrote: fullerenes (discovered 1985, Nobel 1996) and carbon nanotubes (reported by Iijima in 1991) were still 'exotic substances' being characterized. Since then their existence, structure and basic properties have become firmly established textbook science, and both have moved from laboratory curiosities to standard building blocks of nanotechnology (composite materials, batteries, and the related 2004 discovery of graphene, Nobel 2010 to Geim and Novoselov).
Carbon, the backbone of life, also folds itself into perfect soccer-ball cages and seamless cylinders stronger than steel.
References
- What problems of physics and astrophysics seem now to be especially important and interesting (thirty years later, already on the verge of the XXI century)?, V L Ginzburg, Physics-Uspekhi 42 (4) 353-373, 1999
- C60: Buckminsterfullerene, H. W. Kroto, J. R. Heath, S. C. O'Brien, R. F. Curl, R. E. Smalley, Nature 318, 162, 1985
- Helical microtubules of graphitic carbon, S. Iijima, Nature 354, 56, 1991
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