Buckyballs, diamonds inspire new synthetic molecule

Square, cage-shaped molecules called diamondoids (left) linked to soccer-ball shaped buckyballs (right) create a new molecule called a buckydiamondoid, center, in this illustration. These new hybrid molecules may be useful for developing molecular electronic devices in the future.

Manoharan Lab/Stanford University

By Science News Staff

September 9, 2014 at 11:06 am

Guest post by Andrew Grant

Hitching a hollow ball of carbon to a diamond-shaped lattice yields a useful piece of electrical circuitry. The new synthetic molecule consists of a buckyball, a bound set of 60 carbon atoms shaped like a soccer ball, bonded to diamantane, a cage-shaped arrangement of carbon and hydrogen that resembles diamond. The creation, dubbed a buckydiamondoid, allows electricity to flow in a single direction only, researchers report September 9 in Nature Communications.