Fullerenes

"Fullerene" is a term that more and more people have heard. You may have seen pretty pictures of the carbon cage molecules (like the one at left) or heard about potential applications of them. Many researchers at universities and, later, companies have studied fullerenes intensely, and three lucky and talented scientists received the 1996 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for their discovery.

What's the deal? My research group in the physics department at UCSD has done some of the work on these materials. These pages will provide an introduction to the fullerenes, though by no means should the information here be considered complete. This work was done in the mid-to-late 90's, although I have kept my eye on progress since then.

I can give you a solid introduction to fullerene science, the particular work I did on heat capacity, and some of the later offshoots of the research (such as work on nanotubes, which is probably the most useful). I can talk about potential applications, as well as those that just didn't work out. I intend this tutorial to be readable by anyone with a college-level understanding of chemistry and physics-- and even if you don't have that, I think you will get something out of it.

(Aside: my policy on scientific explanations.)

What you'll find on these pages:

Microcalorimetry (on this site)
Frances Hellman's research group (My Ph.D. thesis advisor; now moved to Berkeley from UCSD)

Email: kimall (at symbol) mindspring.com