Abstract
Smalley and co-workers1 have speculated that an icosahedral C60 molecule might have unusual magnetic properties. Here we report that the π-electron ring-current susceptibility of C60 is unusually small and sensitively dependent on the relative strengths of the two inequivalent bonds of the molecule. For equal bond strengths the susceptibility is only -0.21 that of benzene (with field normal to the plane of the six-membered ring). A 2% change in relative bond strengths is enough to change the sign of the susceptibility with the result that C60 is probably weakly diamagnetic. The shielding effect of the π-electrons is calculated to be less than 1 p.p.m. for an atom placed at the centre of C60. A larger effect is expected for C606-, which is calculated to be strongly diamagnetic.
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Elser, V., Haddon, R. Icosahedral C60: an aromatic molecule with a vanishingly small ring current magnetic susceptibility. Nature 325, 792–794 (1987). https://doi.org/10.1038/325792a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/325792a0
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