International Journal of Engineering Research and General Science

12-19

Authors: Dr. Shalini Jaiswal, Shubham Tiwari, Dr. Preeti Singh Bahadur

The allotropes of carbon nanostructure material—such as graphite, graphene, diamond, fullerenes, carbon nanotubes, amorphous carbon, and carbyne—have received great interest due to their chemical and physical properties. Each allotrope exhibits different properties depending on its carbon structure and size.Eji Osawa, a Japanese scientist first found the existence of this form of carbon (Buckminsterfullerene) in 1970. Later in 1985, during work on Carbon clusters, a team of scientists which includes Harry Kroto, Robert Curl and Richard Smalley discovered C60. In 1990 a team of astrophysicists led by Wolfgang Kratschmer and Donald Huffman developed a method to produce this molecule in larger quantities. The Nobel prize committee awarded Harry Kroto, Robert Curl and Richard Smalley were awarded with Nobel Prize in 1996 For the discovery C60. These molecules were first detected in space in 2010 and this incident hinted that these so-called Buckyballs could be responsible for the mysterious interstellar absorptions. The other carbon allotrope materials—fullerenes and carbon nanotubes—have quasi-sp2 hybridization [1].Unlike graphite or graphene, which are predicted to be in planar geometry in their stable form, spherical fullerene has a pyramidalization angle (θσπ – 90) depending on the number of carbon atoms. In this article we focusing on discovery and structure identification of Buckminsterfullerene in space