FULLERENES AS PROTOMINERALS

摘要

An outburst of publications derived to fullerenes - nanometer in size carbon clusters, that were recently discovered in the Karelian shungites and some other natural specimens as well as synthesised in laboratory conditions (Kratschmer e. a., 1990; Curl, Smalley, 1991; Kroto e. a., 1991; Iijima, 1991; Buseck e. a., 1992; Daly e. a., 1993; Buseck, Hua, 1993; di Brozolo e. a., 1994; Fullerenes…, 1995 and some others) forces mineralogists to put a question whether these natural objects are minerals or not. In order to answer it, the revision of mineral classification principles would be conducted. Within the concept proposed by the author, fullerenes naturally stand at their place along with the other "controversial" objects (according to their belongingness to the mineral kingdom) that were formerly included in its amount by V.I. Vernadsky. In order to do it, the main mineralogical object - mineral - was imagined as an object-system and its three primary elements (the main triad) were established M = mE (implied by) siS (implied by) oS (where mE is a mineral embryo or protomineral, siS is a set of inner surfaces inserted into each other and composing the "crystal" body of a mineral, and oS is an outer surface). The members of the main triad in their turn consist of triads of subelements. Several well-known physics-chemical rules, principles and postulates of the mineralogy are proposed as system forming unity relations and compositional rules of the "mineral" object-system, according to which three main classes (systems) of minerals are established: cavyclusts, crystals and mineraloids (Povarennykh, 1991). Fullerenes and nanotubes are proposed to be classified as the first representatives of cavyclusts, and they may be treated as terrestrial analogues of protominerals. Their existence was logically predicted by the author well before their discovery in nature and evolving of the first publications devoted to fullerenes (Povarennykh, Onoprienko, 1986; Povarennykh, 1988, 1990). The characteristic features of fullerenes and nanotubes are summarised from the point of view of a mineralogist and .they are shown to possess the main one of them: surface as an immanent virtue of any mineral which on the contrary does not inherent to the objects of less evolved matter forms of the Universe such as atoms, molecules and elementary fractions.