"Bruce Sterling - Buckymania" - читать интересную книгу автора (Sterling Bruce)

1985, in Houston, Texas, in honor of the American engineer, inventor,
and delphically visionary philosopher, R. Buckminster Fuller.

"Buckminsterfullerene," or C60, is the best-known fullerene.
It's very round, the roundest molecule known to science. Sporting
what is technically known as "truncated icosahedral structure," C60 is
the most symmetric molecule possible in three-dimensional Euclidean
space. Each and every molecule of "Buckminsterfullerene" is a
hollow, geodesic sphere of sixty carbon atoms, all identically linked in
a spherical framework of twelve pentagons and twenty hexagons.
This molecule looks exactly like a common soccerball, and was
therefore nicknamed a "buckyball" by delighted chemists.

A free buckyball rotates merrily through space at one hundred
million revolutions per second. It's just over one nanometer across.
Buckminsterfullerene by the gross forms a solid crystal, is stable at
room temperature, and is an attractive mustard-yellow color. A heap
of crystallized buckyballs stack very much like pool balls, and are as
soft as graphite. It's thought that buckyballs will make good
lubricants -- something like molecular ball bearings.

When compressed, crystallized buckyballs squash and flatten
readily, down to about seventy percent of their volume. They then
refused to move any further and become extremely hard. Just *how*
hard is not yet established, but according to chemical theory,
compressed buckyballs may be considerably harder than diamond.
They may make good shock absorbers, or good armor.

But this is only the beginning of carbon's multifarious oddities in
the playful buckyball field. Because buckyballs are hollow, their
carbon framework can be wrapped around other, entirely different
atoms, forming neat molecular cages. This has already been
successfully done with certain metals, creating the intriguing new
class of "metallofullerites." Then there are buckyballs with a carbon or
two knocked out of the framework, and replaced with metal atoms.
This "doping" process yields a galaxy of so-called "dopeyballs." Some
of these dopeyballs show great promise as superconductors. Other
altered buckyballs seem to be organic ferromagnets.

A thin film of buckyballs can double the frequency of laser light
passing through it. Twisted or deformed buckyballs might act as
optical switches for future fiber-optic networks. Buckyballs with
dangling branches of nickel, palladium, or platinum may serve as new
industrial catalysts.

The electrical properties of buckyballs and their associated
compounds are very unusual, and therefore very promising. Pure C60
is an insulator. Add three potassium atoms, and it becomes a low-
temperature superconductor. Add three more potassium atoms, and it
becomes an insulator again! There's already excited talk in industry of