How unusual is C60? Magic numbers for carbon clusters

✍ Scribed by P.W. Fowler

• Publisher: Elsevier Science
• Year: 1986
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 623 KB
• Volume: 131
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0009-2614
• DOI: 10.1016/0009-2614(86)80563-2

✦ Synopsis

Icosahedral carbon clusters with pentagonal and hexagonal faces are Goldberg polyhedra. They have 2O(b* + Bc + c*) atoms, where b and c are non-negative integers, and obey an electron-counting rule similar to the famous Htickel(4n + 2) prescription. When b -c is divisible by 3 the cluster has a multiple of 60 atoms and is closed-shell; otherwise it has 60n + 20 atoms and is open-shell. A geometrical interpretation of this rule is: open-shell Goldberg clusters have atoms on the Cs axes, closed-shell clusters do not. Closed shells are predicted for Ceo, Crao, C240, C42e, C5~, . . . . Irrespective of pointgroup symmetry, structures of large clusters may be generated by a leapfrog method from smaller ones. A tetrahedral structure generated in this way is the best candidate for Cr2e.