In chemistry, a carbide usually describes a compound composed of carbon and a metal. In metallurgy, carbiding or carburizing is the process for producing carbide coatings on a metal piece.
A fullerene is an allotrope of carbon whose molecules consist of carbon atoms connected by single and double bonds so as to form a closed or partially closed mesh, with fused rings of five to six atoms. The molecules may have hollow sphere- and ellipsoid-like forms, tubes, or other shapes.
Buckminsterfullerene is a type of fullerene with the formula C60. It has a cage-like fused-ring structure (truncated icosahedron) made of twenty hexagons and twelve pentagons, and resembles a football. Each of its 60 carbon atoms is bonded to its three neighbors.
In chemistry, a hydride is formally the anion of hydrogen (H−), a hydrogen ion with two electrons. In modern usage, this is typically only used for ionic bonds, but it is sometimes (and more frequently in the past) been applied to all compounds containing covalently bound H atoms. In this broad and potentially archaic sense, water (H2O) is a hydride of oxygen, ammonia is a hydride of nitrogen, etc. In covalent compounds, it implies hydrogen is attached to a less electronegative element. In such cases, the H centre has nucleophilic character, which contrasts with the protic character of acids. The hydride anion is very rarely observed.
Boron hydride clusters are compounds with the formula BxHy or related anions, where x ≥ 3. Many such cluster compounds are known. Common examples are those with 5, 10, and 12 boron atoms. Although they have few practical applications, the borane hydride clusters exhibit structures and bonding that differs strongly from the patterns seen in hydrocarbons. Hybrids of boranes and hydrocarbons, the carboranes are also well developed.
Dodecahedrane is a chemical compound, a hydrocarbon with formula C20H20, whose carbon atoms are arranged as the vertices (corners) of a regular dodecahedron. Each carbon is bound to three neighbouring carbon atoms and to a hydrogen atom. This compound is one of the three possible Platonic hydrocarbons, the other two being cubane and tetrahedrane.
Endohedral fullerenes, also called endofullerenes, are fullerenes that have additional atoms, ions, or clusters enclosed within their inner spheres. The first lanthanum C60 complex called La@C60 was synthesized in 1985. The @ (at sign) in the name reflects the notion of a small molecule trapped inside a shell. Two types of endohedral complexes exist: endohedral metallofullerenes and non-metal doped fullerenes.
Fullerene chemistry is a field of organic chemistry devoted to the chemical properties of fullerenes. Research in this field is driven by the need to functionalize fullerenes and tune their properties. For example, fullerene is notoriously insoluble and adding a suitable group can enhance solubility. By adding a polymerizable group, a fullerene polymer can be obtained. Functionalized fullerenes are divided into two classes: exohedral fullerenes with substituents outside the cage and endohedral fullerenes with trapped molecules inside the cage.
Sodium metaborate is a chemical compound of sodium, boron, and oxygen with formula NaBO2. However, the metaborate ion is trimeric in the anhydrous solid, therefore a more correct formula is Na3B3O6 or (Na+)3[B3O6]3−. The formula can be written also as Na2O·B2O3 to highlight the relation to the main oxides of sodium and boron. The name is also applied to several hydrates whose formulas can be written NaBO2·nH2O for various values of n.
C70 fullerene is the fullerene molecule consisting of 70 carbon atoms. It is a cage-like fused-ring structure which resembles a rugby ball, made of 25 hexagons and 12 pentagons, with a carbon atom at the vertices of each polygon and a bond along each polygon edge. A related fullerene molecule, named buckminsterfullerene (or C60 fullerene) consists of 60 carbon atoms.
A transition metal fullerene complex is a coordination complex wherein fullerene serves as a ligand. Fullerenes are typically spheroidal carbon compounds, the most prevalent being buckminsterfullerene, C60.
Carborane acidsH(CXB
11Y
5Z
6) (X, Y, Z = H, Alk, F, Cl, Br, CF3) are a class of superacids, some of which are estimated to be at least one million times stronger than 100% pure sulfuric acid in terms of their Hammett acidity function values (H0 ≤ –18) and possess computed pKa values well below –20, establishing them as some of the strongest known Brønsted acids. The best-studied example is the highly chlorinated derivative H(CHB
11Cl
11). The acidity of H(CHB
11Cl
11) was found to vastly exceed that of triflic acid, CF
3SO
3H, and bistriflimide, (CF
3SO
2)
2NH, compounds previously regarded as the strongest isolable acids.
Borophene is a crystalline atomic monolayer of boron, i.e., it is a two-dimensional allotrope of boron and also known as boron sheet. First predicted by theory in the mid-1990s, different borophene structures were experimentally confirmed in 2015.
The helium dimer is a van der Waals molecule with formula He2 consisting of two helium atoms. This chemical is the largest diatomic molecule—a molecule consisting of two atoms bonded together. The bond that holds this dimer together is so weak that it will break if the molecule rotates, or vibrates too much. It can only exist at very low cryogenic temperatures.
Neon compounds are chemical compounds containing the element neon (Ne) with other molecules or elements from the periodic table. Compounds of the noble gas neon were believed not to exist, but there are now known to be molecular ions containing neon, as well as temporary excited neon-containing molecules called excimers. Several neutral neon molecules have also been predicted to be stable, but are yet to be discovered in nature. Neon has been shown to crystallize with other substances and form clathrates or Van der Waals solids.
Volleyballene is a hypothetical chemical compound that is a new type of 3D hollow molecule composed of carbon and transition metals. The name is a reference to fullerenes. The main feature of these substances is that metal atoms are part of the framework and they are not deposited on the surface of the molecule. The incorporation of the metal atoms avoids their clustering and confers to volleyballene sites to attach hydrogen. Volleyballene was predicted in 2016 by Jing Wang et al. A further study based on Density functional Theory (DFT) carried out by Tlahuice-Flores in the same year supports the predicted structure and gives computed Infrared, Raman and UV spectra for its experimental detection. The structure is described as one Sc8 cluster holding 12 scandium atoms linked to six C10 units on each face. The chemical formula C60Sc20 is closely related to C80 fullerene and it has a large predicted HOMO-LUMO gap of 1.47 eV. Further hydrogenation of volleyballene is predicted to give a 70-H structure with an adsorption energy of circa −0.11 eV/H2. Moreover, it is expected that the adsorption-desorption reaction can be reached at ambient temperature. Potential use of volleyballenes is hydrogen storage even at ambient conditions.
The triboracyclopropenyl fragment is a cyclic structural motif in boron chemistry, named for its geometric similarity to cyclopropene. In contrast to nonplanar borane clusters that exhibit higher coordination numbers at boron (e.g., through 3-center 2-electron bonds to bridging hydrides or cations), triboracyclopropenyl-type structures are rings of three boron atoms where substituents at each boron are also coplanar to the ring. Triboracyclopropenyl-containing compounds are extreme cases of inorganic aromaticity. They are the lightest and smallest cyclic structures known to display the bonding and magnetic properties that originate from fully delocalized electrons in orbitals of σ and π symmetry. Although three-membered rings of boron are frequently so highly strained as to be experimentally inaccessible, academic interest in their distinctive aromaticity and possible role as intermediates of borane pyrolysis motivated extensive computational studies by theoretical chemists. Beginning in the late 1980s with mass spectrometry work by Anderson et al. on all-boron clusters, experimental studies of triboracyclopropenyls were for decades exclusively limited to gas-phase investigations of the simplest rings (ions of B3). However, more recent work has stabilized the triboracyclopropenyl moiety via coordination to donor ligands or transition metals, dramatically expanding the scope of its chemistry.
Metal cluster compounds are a molecular ion or neutral compound composed of three or more metals and featuring significant metal-metal interactions.
Marilyn Olmstead was an American chemist, an expert in small molecule crystallography and an international leader in the crystallographic study of fullerenes, or "Buckyballs." She held the position of professor emerita of chemistry at the University of California Davis.
Alexander I. Boldyrev was a Russian-American computational chemist and R. Gaurth Hansen Professor at Utah State University. Professor Boldyrev is known for his pioneering works on superhalogens, superalkalis, tetracoordinated planar carbon, inorganic double helix, boron and aluminum clusters, and chemical bonding theory, especially aromaticity/antiaromaticity in all-metal structures, and development of the Adaptive Natural Density Partitioning (AdNDP) method.
