Lecture on Nanocomposites.pptVIP

* Carbon Molecules, cont. Buckyballs were discovered by Smalley (Rice University), Kroto and Curl in 1985 by vaporizing carbon with a laser and allowing carbon atoms to condense. A buckyball is short for buckmisterfullerene after Buckminster Fuller, an American architect and engineer, who proposed an arrangement of pentagons and hexagons for geodesic dome structures. It has 60 carbon atoms in a ball shaped with 20 hexagons and 12 pentagons and has a diameter of about one nanometer. A buckyball * Carbon Molecules, cont. In 1991, carbon nanotubes (CNTs) were discovered by Sumio Iijima of NEC Res