Skip to main content

Thank you for visiting nature.com. You are using a browser version with limited support for CSS. To obtain the best experience, we recommend you use a more up to date browser (or turn off compatibility mode in Internet Explorer). In the meantime, to ensure continued support, we are displaying the site without styles and JavaScript.

  • NEWS AND VIEWS

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.
  1. J. Michael Gottfried

    1. J. Michael Gottfried is in the Department of Chemistry, Philipps University of Marburg, 35032 Marburg, Germany.

    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed  Google Scholar

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.

Access options

Rent or buy this article

Prices vary by article type

from$1.95

to$39.95

Learn more

Prices may be subject to local taxes which are calculated during checkout

Nature 606, 470-471 (2022)

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

References

  1. Hou, L. et al. Nature 606, 507–510 (2022).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  2. Kroto, H. W., Heath, J. R., O’Brien, S. C., Curl, R. F. & Smalley, R. E. Nature 318, 162–163 (1985).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  3. Novoselov, K. S. et al. Science 306, 666–669 (2004).

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  4. Fan, Q. et al. Science 372, 852–856 (2021).

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  5. Hu, Y. et al. Nature Synth. https://doi.org/10.1038/s44160-022-00068-7 (2022).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  6. Alcón, I. et al. J. Am. Chem. Soc. 144, 8278–8285 (2022).

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  7. Iwasa, Y. et al. Science 264, 1570–1572 (1994).

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  8. Pekker, S. et al. Science 265, 1077–1078 (1994).

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  9. Goze, C. et al. Phys. Rev. B 54, R3676–R3678 (1996).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  10. Kory, M. J. et al. Nature Chem. 6, 779–784 (2014).

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

Download references

Competing Interests

The author declares no competing interests.

Subjects

Latest on:

Nature Careers

Jobs

Nature Briefing

Sign up for the Nature Briefing newsletter — what matters in science, free to your inbox daily.

Get the most important science stories of the day, free in your inbox. Sign up for Nature Briefing

Search

Advanced search

Quick links