Buckyball necklace

It's almost 15 years since Sir Harry Kroto and colleagues published their seminal paper on the discovery of buckminsterfullerene, C₆₀. In that time, these all-carbon molecules with their spherical, or more precisely, truncated icosahedral structure have yet to reveal their killer application. Recently, Nazario Martin and his colleagues at the University of Madrid, have developed a novel electroactive 'fullerene receptor' molecule, a molecule that specifically recognises and binds to the surfaces of fullerenes. Now, the team has taken that research one step further to make hybrid molecules that bring together the fullerene receptors with fullerenes themselves to form linear aggregates of molecules lined up like a string of pearls.¹