Soluble and Tubular Higher Fullerenes that Encapsulate Metals

摘要

Distinctly different from other carbon allotropes, fullerenes are the only soluble form of elemental carbon with a definitive molecular structure. Such properties are fundamentally important, especially for chemists, because isolation of pure isomers and further chemical modification and accurate structural elucidation become possible. At the early stage of fullerene research, however, the structural consideration of fullerenes was a favorite trick of theoreticians.