Scientific Calendar Event



Description
After the discovery of the C60 fullerene some 25 years ago, many more hollow and endohedrally doped structures made out of various elementshave been proposed theoretically. However, since no other fullerenes have been synthesized up to date , the question arises whether experimentalists have just not yet found a way to synthesize these theoretically predicted fullerenes, or whether they do not exist at all in nature.
Following the theoretical discovery of the B_80 fullerene by Szwacki  et al, various other fullerene and stuffed fullerene structures were proposed but none of them could be synthesized in the  laboratory yet.  Using the minima hopping global geometry optimization  method on the density functional potential energy surface we show that the  energy landscape of boron clusters is glass like.
Medium size boron clusters exhibit many structures which are lower in  energy than the cages. This is in contrast to carbon and boron nitride systems which can be  clearly identified as structure seekers. The differences in the potential energy landscape explain why carbon and  boron nitride systems are found in nature whereas pure boron fullerenes have not been found. We thus present a methodology which can make predictions on the feasibility of the synthesis of new nano structures.
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