How was buckminster fullerene discovered?

Answer 1

The serendipitous discovery took place during experiments involving a cluster beam which uses a laser to vaporise a graphite rod in a helium atmosphere to produce carbon plasmas. The research was aimed at characterizing unidentified interstellar matter. Mass spectrometry evidence from these experiments indicated that carbon molecules with C60 atoms were forming, with a spheroidal geometry being most likely. In 1989 work by Krätschmer, Fostiropoulos and Huffman later produced C60 by arcing carbon rods in an inert atmosphere. Production efficiencies were claimed to me much higher then those produced using the cluster beam. Their finding were confirmed by IR and UV measurements The structure was named after the architect Richard Buckminster Fuller's geodesic dome structure which bore a resemblance to the structure of the C60 Buckminsterfullerene structure. These same structures are also known as Buckyballs or fullerenes. Buckminsterfullerene is the third allotrope of carbon along with graphite and diamond. Since their discovery, Buckyballs have become such a hot topic of research that they have spawned their own branch of chemistry. So much so that the journal "Fullerene Science and Technology" dedicated to fullerenes was launched in 1993.