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Phys. Rev. Lett. 98, 166804 (2007) [4 pages]

B80 Fullerene: An Ab Initio Prediction of Geometry, Stability, and Electronic Structure

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Nevill Gonzalez Szwacki1,2, Arta Sadrzadeh1, and Boris I. Yakobson1,*
1Department of Mechanical Engineering & Materials Science and Department of Chemistry, Rice University, Houston, Texas 77251, USA
2Institute of Physics PAS, 02-668 Warsaw, Poland

See Also: Erratum

Received 23 December 2006; published 20 April 2007

The geometry, electronic, and structural properties of an unusually stable boron cage made of 80 boron atoms are studied, using ab initio calculations. The shape of this cluster is very similar to that of the well-known C60 fullerene, but in the B80 case, there is an additional atom in the center of each hexagon. The resulting cage preserves the Ih symmetry, has a relatively large highest occupied and lowest unoccupied energy gap (∼1  eV) and, most importantly, is energetically more stable than boron double rings, which were detected in experiments and considered as building blocks of boron nanotubes. To our knowledge, this is the most stable boron cage studied so far.

© 2007 The American Physical Society

URL:
http://link.aps.org/doi/10.1103/PhysRevLett.98.166804
DOI:
10.1103/PhysRevLett.98.166804
PACS:
81.05.Tp, 61.48.+c, 81.07.Nb, 82.20.Wt

*Corresponding author.

Electronic address: biy@rice.edu

See Also

Erratum: Nevill Gonzalez Szwacki, Arta Sadrzadeh, and Boris I. Yakobson, Erratum: B80 Fullerene: An Ab Initio Prediction of Geometry, Stability, and Electronic Structure [Phys. Rev. Lett. 98, 166804 (2007)], Phys. Rev. Lett. 100, 159901 (2008).