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"This is the first prediction of its possible
existence," Yakobson said of the boron buckyball, or B80. "This has
not been observed or even conceived of before. We do hope it may lead
to a significant breakthrough."
In the earliest stages of their work, the team
attempted to build a "buckyball" using silicon atoms but determined
that it would collapse on itself. Their search for another possible
atom led them on a short trip across the periodic table.
"Boron is nearby (one atomic unit from carbon). One
reason we tried it was because of proximity," Yakobson said. "Boron
also has the ability to catenate, to stick together better, than other
atoms, which also made it appealing."
Initial work with 60 boron atoms failed to create a
hollow ball that would hold its form, so another boron atom was placed
into the center of each hexagon for added stability.
Yakobson estimated that the scientific work, the
consideration of the variety of boron clusters to single out the B80,
took more than a year, with Szwacki initially leading the work and
then Sadrzadeh gradually taking greater part in the effort.
"We thought we had the answer, essentially, after
three or four months, but then we had to prove it," Yakobson said. "There
are numerous possibilities, but we had to prove that this was the
answer. I think we’ve made a convincing case."
Yakobson said it is too early to speculate whether
the boron buckyball will prove to be equally or more useful than its
Nobel Prize-winning sibling.
"It’s too early to make comparisons," he said. "All
we know is that it’s a very logical, very stable structure likely to
exist.
"But this opens up a whole new direction, a whole
new continent to explore. There should be a strong effort to find it
experimentally. That may not be an easy path, but we gave them a good
road map."
Following the paper's acceptance, there was a
little debate with the journal's editors about whether or not the
structure could be named "buckyball." Yakobson mentioned this to Curl.
"Bob (Curl) said with a chuckle that it was more of
a ‘buckyball’ than his buckyball," Yakobson said. The reason being
that C60 was named for famed architect Buckminster Fuller, because the
buckyball looked like conjoined geodesic domes, a structure that
Fuller had invented.
"When Fuller made his domes, he made them from
triangles because hexagons would collapse," Yakobson said. "In B80, we
fill the hexagon with one more atom, making triangles."
Yakobson said having the paper published in
Physical Review Letters will help get the attention of
experimentalists in the field.
"It is very helpful that this work can be seen and
this is just a good instrument for it," he said. "To be able to
deliver it to this broad a base of physicists and chemists is a good
start." |
