Researchers have gained new insights into the unique chemical properties of spherical molecules composed entirely of carbon atoms, called fullerenes. They did it by making flat fragments of the ...

Gold buckyball fullerenes each contain a hollow inner core of 12 gold atoms (left) and a 20-atom gold outer core (center). Attached organic ligands (right) stabilize the structure.

Fullerenes have fascinated chemists for decades—with the discoverers of the all-carbon version C 60 even nabbing the 1996 Nobel Prize in Chemistry. Chemists have also tried to make these cagey ...

A laser (green) shines on a fullerene (blue) with modifications (orange). This polarizes embedded electrons (yellow) which in turn impart their orientation on neighboring protons (red). This is what ...