Monday, November 9, 2009

Beaded Virus

In all of the high-genus fullerenes, the structures of inner parts are covered by an outer sheet. It is difficult to see the organization of beads inside. In the following few photos, I gave the inner-layer structures of a high-genus fullerene at several different stages of construction. The first figure shows the HG-fullerene with only inner part. It is astonishing that this molecule has such a resemblance to a virus.

With a careful examination, one can see the inner part consists essentially of twelve necks arranged on the surface of a dodecahedron. More importantly, these necks are nothing but the inner-rim of a toroidal carbon nanotube with 120 carbon atoms (T120), which is my favorite molecule. So a simple counting indicates that this structure should have 12*10=120 heptagons in all necks. To weave this structure, I have used about 3 fishing threads with a length about 3.5 m. Of course, by a carefully designed weaving sequence, one can in principle use only one fishing thread to make the whole structure.


From Beaded Virus


From Beaded Virus


From Beaded Virus


From Beaded Virus


From Beaded Virus


From Beaded Virus

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