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It has a cage-like spherical structure made up for 20 hexagons and 12 pentagons and resembles a soccer ball, earning it the nickname 'bucky ball'.
In a recent breakthrough in synthetic chemistry, the Japanese scientists from Kyoto have invented a molecular surgery technique allowing them to successfully permanently seal small molecules such as H2 and H2O inside C60.
They used a set of surgical synthetic procedures to open the C60 'cage' producing an opening large enough to 'push' a H2 or H2O molecule inside at high temperature and pressure. The system was then cooled down to stabilise the entrapped molecule inside and the cage was surgically repaired to reproduce a C60.
Professor Horsewill added: "This technique succeeds in combining perhaps the universe's most beautiful molecule C60 with its simplest."
The Nottingham research group has employed a technique called inelastic neutron scattering (INS) where a beam of neutrons, fundamental particles that make up the atomic nucleus, is used to investigate the 'cage rattling' motion of the guest molecules within the C60.
Their investigations have given an insight into the wavelike nature of H20 and H2 molecules and their orbital and rotational motion as they move within the C60.
Professor Malcolm Levitt, of the School of Chemistry at The University of Southampton, who has used the technique nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) to study the quantum properties of the caged molecules, said: "By confining small molecules such as water in fullerene cages we provide the controlled environment of a laboratory but on the scale of about one nanometre.
"Under these conditions, the confined molecules reveal a wave-like nature and behave according to the laws of quantum mechanics. Apart from their intrinsic interest, we expect that the special properties of these materials will lead to a variety of applica
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| Contact: Emma Thorne emma.thorne@nottingham.ac.uk 44-011-595-15793 University of Nottingham Source:Eurekalert |