On September 27, 2001, Nobel Prize winner Richard A. Smalley (L), discoverer of a form of carbon called "Buckminsterfullerene," tells Don
Richards, Gulf Coast Editor of
Chemical Market Reporter, "If we can ever get this stuff made in large amounts and find ways of assembling
it, it is manifest that we�ll have the most incredible building material you can imagine."
![[Nobelist Rick Smalley (L) and Don Richards]](donny1.jpg)
According to Nobelist Smalley, fullerene single-walled nanotubes
may be used to produce "the strongest fiber that will ever be made,"
have the electrical conductivity of copper or silicon, the thermal conductivity of diamond, the chemistry of carbon, and the "size and
perfection of DNA."
The fullerenes, discovered in 1985, are a family of carbon allotropes named after R. Buckminster Fuller, who favored hexagonal structures in architecture, and are sometimes called buckyballs. They are molecules composed entirely of carbon (C60), in the form of a hollow sphere, ellipsoid, or tube. Cylindrical fullerenes are called Carbon nanotubes or buckytubes.
![['Buckyrope' configuration - courtesy of Rice University]](buckyrope.jpg)
