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.