Fullerene material is one of the allotrope of carbon. Any kind of substances, consisted of carbon elements only and formed with spherical, elliptical or tubular structure, can be called fullerenes. The structure of fullerene is similar to that of graphite, the difference is that five-membered rings exist in the fullerene, while only six membered rings in graphite. The first fullerene molecule was discovered and prepared in 1985 by Richard Smalley, Robert Curl, James Heath, Sean O’Brien, and Harold Kroto at Rice University. The name come from Buckminster Fuller, whose geodesic domes it resembles.
* The hardness of fullerene is harder than diamond
* The ductility of fullerene is 100 times stronger than steel
* Fullerene conduct electricity. Fullerene has more stronger conductivity than copper, Fullere's weighs only one 6 of copper material.
* Fullerene made of carbon, so fullerene can be extracted from waste
Fullerene has many areas for using. Some of them :
1. Pharmaceutical: Diagnostic reagents, super drugs, cosmetics, nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) with the developer. DNA affinity
2.Energy: Solar battery, fuel cell, secondary battery.
3.Industry: Wear resistant material, flame retardant materials, lubricants, polymer additives, high-performance membrane, catalyst, artificial diamond, hard alloy, electric viscous fluid, ink filters, high-performance coatings, fire retardant coatings, manufacturing bioactive materials , memory materials, embedded molecular and other characteristics, composite materials etc.
4.Information industry: Semiconductor record medium, magnetic materials, printing ink, toner, ink, paper special purposes.
5.Electronic parts: Superconducting semiconductor, diodes, transistors, inductor.
6.Optical materials, electronic camera, fluorescence display tube, nonlinear optical materials.