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Decades Old Mystery of Buckyballs Cracked
In the study, published in Nature Communications at the end of May, the scientists describe their ingenious approach to testing how fullerenes grow. “We started with a paste of pre-existing fullerene molecules mixed with carbon and helium, shot it with a laser, and instead of destroying the fullerenes we were surprised to find they’d actually grown.” The fullerenes were able to absorb and incorporate carbon from the surrounding gas.
By using fullerenes that contained heavy metal atoms in their centers, the scientists showed that the carbon cages remained closed throughout the process. “If the cages grew by splitting open we would have lost the metal atoms, but they always stayed locked inside,” noted Dunk.
