Actually, fullerenes aren't "new". A fairly significant amount of
soot (I believe the figure I read was 5%) contains fullerenes.
Candle soot contains fullerenes.
Anytime
carbon atoms
sublime and remain unoxidized, they cluster to form fullerenes. They like it,
energetically speaking.
Since fullerenes are
aromatic, they should be transition-metal coordinatible. If one
coordinates two
transition metal atoms at the fullerene's "poles", and can manage to coordinate these atoms to a stationary
matrix (a
polyethylene derivative with cyclopentadienyl sidegroups comes to mind), the
freaking fullerene could
spin in place. If one then successfully coordinated additional
ferromagnetic transition metals at the spinning
equator of this trapped fullerene, and transmitted mechanical energy into the system (think
windvane), and interact these moving transition metal species with additional magnetically-active species, one begins to see the technology to create
nanogenerators. Hopefully this will lead to technology like a
Brownian Motion Collector. That would rock.