“Superionic” Buckyball Crystal
A team of researchers from Italy, Hungary, and the UK reasoned that buckyballs bonded into a crystal structure, like stacked fruit, would generate a material with big spaces in between the spheres. “To create large channels, we need large building blocks,” says team member Mauro Riccò of the University of Parma in Italy. And each buckyball can accommodate multiple negative charges, good for incorporating many positive ions. But which ion to use? Previous experiments found that sodium ions couldn’t move easily between the buckyballs.
The smaller lithium ion is a much better choice, Riccò and his colleagues report after completing a long characterization of their new compound, which consists of four lithium ions per buckyball.
Bulk out buckeyball tetranions by coordinating four large neutral Lewis acid ligands like trimesitylborane. The symmetric three-ring all-chair product of triethylamine-borane with all-trans-cyclododeca-1,5,9-triene, allcis-perhydro-9b-boraphenalene, would also be fun. Separating lithium cations from expanded anion cores with a grease barrier will substantially increase their motility.