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Article: Research allows manufacture of nanoscale 'footballs' with boron.(Composites)
- Article from:
- New Materials Asia
- Article date:
- January 1, 2009
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2009 International Newsletters. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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The surface of a football is composed of hexagons and pentagons: the hexagons lie side by side while any pentagon is surrounded by five hexagons. How many corners and edges are there? Footballers do not have to know that as long as they can pass and shoot; but an architect or structural physicist could readily give the answer.
For decades, scientists have tried to build molecular structures as symmetric, stable and useful as the football's spheric frame. A rapid communication published online in the November 2008 issue of Physical Review B reported a possible recipe for building a variety of nanoscale 'footballs' with boron, an element just next to carbon in the ...