Structure and Properties of the Nonface-Spiral Fullerenes T-C380, D3-C384, D3-C440, and D3-C672 and Their Halma and Leapfrog Transforms

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The structure and properties of the three smallest nonface-spiral (NS) fullerenes NS-T-C380, NS-D3-C384, NS-D3-C440, and the first isolated pentagon NS-fullerene, NS-D3-C672, are investigated in detail. They are constructed by either a generalized face-spiral algorithm or by vertex insertions followed by a force-field optimization using the recently introduced program Fullerene. The obtained structures were then further optimized at the density functional level of theory and their stability analyzed with reference to Ih-C60. The large number of hexagons results in a higher stability of the NS-fullerenes compared to C60, but, as expected, in a lower stability than most stable isomers. None of the many investigated halma transforms on nonspiral fullerenes, NS-T-C380, NS-D3-C384, NS-D3-C440, and NS-D3-C672, admit any spirals, and we conjecture that all halma transforms of NS-fullerenes belong to the class of NS-fullerenes. A similar result was found to not hold for the related leapfrog transformation. We also show that the first known NS-fullerene with isolated pentagons, NS-D3-C672, is a halma transform of D3-C168.
Original languageEnglish
JournalJournal of Chemical Information and Modeling
Volume54
Issue number1
Pages (from-to)121-130
ISSN1549-9596
Publication statusPublished - 6 Dec 2013

ID: 97423690