Molecular soccer balls connected to make a 2D material

Gottfried, J. Michael

doi:10.1038/d41586-022-01568-4

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15 June 2022

Molecular soccer balls connected to make a 2D material

Two-dimensional materials made of carbon have been limited to monolayers of atoms, such as graphene. Sheets composed of connected buckyballs — spherical clusters of atoms — have now been made by peeling layers from a crystal.

J. Michael Gottfried ORCID: http://orcid.org/0000-0001-5579-2568 ⁰

J. Michael Gottfried
1. J. Michael Gottfried is in the Department of Chemistry, Philipps University of Marburg, 35032 Marburg, Germany.
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Ever since the discovery that single-atom-thick sheets of carbon, known as graphene, have unique properties, carbon-based 2D nanomaterials have received much attention in research and technology. There have been two main ways to make 2D nanomaterials: building them up from smaller units, such as atoms or molecules; and peeling single layers of materials from a 3D crystal. Writing in Nature, Hou et al.¹ show that these two approaches can be combined to make a new form of carbon that consists of soccer-ball-shaped C₆₀ molecules, known colloquially as buckyballs, linked by carbon–carbon (C–C) bonds (Fig. 1a). This polymeric material has properties that make it potentially suitable for use in 2D electronic and optoelectronic devices.

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Nature 606, 470-471 (2022)

doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-022-01568-4

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