Fullerene

Buckminsterfullerene (or bucky-ball) is a spherical fullerene molecule with the formula C60. It has a cage-like fused-ring structure (truncated icosahedron) which resembles a football (soccer ball), made of twenty hexagons and twelvepentagons, with a carbon atom at each vertex of each polygon and a bond along each polygon edge.

he structure of a buckminsterfullerene is a truncated icosahedron with 60 vertices and 32 faces (20 hexagons and 12 pentagons where no pentagons share a vertex) with a carbon atom at the vertices of each polygon and a bond along each polygon edge. The van der Waals diameter of a C
60 molecule is about 1.01 nanometers(nm). The nucleus to nucleus diameter of a C
60 molecule is about 0.71 nm. The C
60 molecule has two bond lengths. The 6:6 ring bonds (between two hexagons) can be considered "double bonds" and are shorter than the 6:5 bonds (between a hexagon and a pentagon). Its average bond length is 0.14 nm. Each carbon atom in the structure is bonded covalently with 3 others.[28]

The C
60 molecule is extremely stable,[29] withstanding high temperatures and high pressures. The exposed surface of the structure can selectively react with other species while maintaining the spherical geometry.[30] Atoms and small molecules can be trapped within the molecule without reacting.

C
60 undergoes six reversible, one-electron reductions to C6−
60, but oxidation is irreversible. The first reduction needs ~1.0 V (Fc/Fc+
), showing that C60 is a moderately effective electron acceptor. C
60 tends to avoid having double bonds in the pentagonal rings, which makes electron delocalization poor, and results in C
60 not being "superaromatic". C60 behaves very much like an electron deficient alkene and readily reacts with electron rich species.[21]

A carbon atom in the C
60 molecule can be substituted by a nitrogen or boron atom yielding a C
59N or C59B respectively.[31]

(from wikipedia)