Evidence of hollow golden cages

Authors

Satya S. Bulusu, University of Nebraska-LincolnFollow
Xi Li, Rowland Institute at HarvardFollow
Lai-Sheng Wang, Washington State University & Pacific Northwest National LaboratoryFollow
Xiao Cheng Zeng, University of Nebraska-LincolnFollow

Date of this Version

5-30-2006

Comments

Published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, vol. 103, no. 22 (May 30, 2006), pp. 8326–8330. Published online May 19, 2006: http://www.pnas.org/cgi/doi/10.1073/pnas.0600637103 Copyright © 2006 by The National Academy of Sciences of the USA. Used by permission.

Abstract

The fullerenes are the first “free-standing” elemental hollow cages identified by spectroscopy experiments and synthesized in the bulk. Here, we report experimental and theoretical evidence of hollow cages consisting of pure metal atoms, Au–_n (n = 16–18); to our knowledge, free-standing metal hollow cages have not been previously detected in the laboratory. These hollow golden cages (“bucky gold”) have an average diameter >5.5 Å, which can easily accommodate one guest atom inside.