Model buckyball tops Bristol nanoscience lab

The four-metre diameter model of a carbon molecule buckyball being lowered onto the roof at Bristol University. Photo credit: Dave Pratt, University of Bristol

A four-metre diameter model of a carbon molecule buckyball, one of the fundamental components of nano-engineering, has been placed on top of the Centre for Nanoscience and Quantum Information currently under construction at Bristol University.

The £11m facility will contain some of the 'quietest' labs in the world when it opens in spring 2008. Conducting experiments on the nano-scale requires extremely low levels of vibration and noise, and stringent controls on air temperature and noise.

The centre will be used by boffins from numerous disciplines, including biologists, chemists, computer scientists, engineers, mathematicians and physicists.

Computer scientists, for example, will be able to research new quantum computing solutions, and biologists will be able to conduct experiments at the level of individual cells.

Carbon fullerenes, nicknamed buckyballs because they resemble the geodesic spheres made popular by US designer Richard Buckminster Fuller, are hollow spherical carbon molecules.

Containing sheets of carbon atoms linked in hexagonal rings similar to graphite, fullerenes also contain pentagonal and sometimes heptagonal rings which cause them to curve into their familiar ball shape.

The fullerenes are used in the manufacture of carbon nanotubes, which are predicted to be one of the key materials in the 21st century, capable of being used in everything from armoured plating to the construction of a space elevator reaching into orbit.