ABSTRACT
Engineered nanosized particles are new materials of emerging technological importance in different industries (1,2). The U.S. National Science Foundation estimated that millions of workers would be needed to support nanotechnology industries worldwide within 15 years. One direction of the nanomaterial industries is developing new carbon nanomaterials. Carbon atoms can be arranged into diverse geometries, forming a number of stable nanostructures. For example, a graphene sheet is rolled up, usually using a metal catalyst, to form a long single-walled carbon nanotube (SWCNT) with a diameter of ∼1 nm. Bare carbon atoms can also be organized into spherical structures as fullerenes (“buckyballs”). The most stable and readily available fullerene is C60 having an average diameter of 0.72 nm. In addition to these single layer structures, large nanotubes and fullerenes can also be synthesized forming multiwalled nanotubes (MWNT) or onion-like clusters, respectively (3). Fullerenes, because of their strong electronegativity, can be combined with metals and other molecules to form metallofullerenes.
