C fullerene molecule determined to be chiral

Abstract

C 76 , one of the more stable members of the fullerene family of carboncage molecules, has been found to be a chiral molecule with a corkscrewlike twist to it by chemists at the University of California, Los Angeles. This structure, which may be shared by other fullerenes, sets C 76 apart from its better known and highly symmetrical cousins C 6o (buckminsterfullerene) and C 70 . UCLA chemistry professors Robert L. Whetten and Fracois Diederich and coworkers have isolated and partially characterized a number of the higher fullerenes, including C 76 , C 84 , C 90 , and C 94 . But the group was frustrated in its early attempts to use 13 C NMR spectroscopy to confirm the highly symmetrical structures predicted for C 76 and C 84 . The failure, it turns out, was not in the experiments but in the early structure predictions. The UCLA chemists have now obtained a 13 C NMR spectrum for C 76 that contains 19 lines of equal intensity. This indicates C 76 contains ...