The nanoscale world appears to have a new ball to kick around. Researchers from Brown University have shown the first experimental evidence for a "buckyball" molecule made from 80 boron atoms. The new structure is the cousin of the carbon buckyball, known formally as Buckminsterfullerene—a soccer ball-shaped molecule made from 60 carbon atoms that helped launch the nanotechnology revolution when it was discovered just over 40 years ago.
The evidence for the new nanostructure comes from photoelectron spectroscopy, which provides a sort of fingerprint for different molecular shapes and structures. The study is published in Chemical Science.
"I really didn't think this structure was going to be stable and that we were going to disprove its existence," said Lai-Sheng Wang, a professor of chemistry at Brown and the paper's corresponding author. "But when my student showed me the spectrum for the boron-80 cluster after I returned from a trip, I couldn't believe it."