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Our Road to Fullerenes: A Personal Account

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Handbook of Fullerene Science and Technology

Abstract

Carbon is the most abundant condensable element in space. Our attempts to produce interstellar-like graphitic grains unexpectedly led to the discovery of a method for fullerene production in bulk amounts. These works opened the door for an entirely new branch of materials research and carbon chemistry. Recently, fullerenes were also detected in interstellar space. Presented are the various phases and steps of our work which with intermissions lasted from 1983 to 1990. In the beginning there were unexplained UV absorptions in the soot samples we had produced, and the endpoint was marked by the extraction of fullerenes in crystalline form and in form of coated films from just these samples.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Max-Planck-Institut für Kernphysik, Heidelberg, Germany

    Wolfgang Krätschmer

Authors
  1. Wolfgang Krätschmer
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Wolfgang Krätschmer .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. School of Materials Science and Eng., Huazhong University of Science and Technology., Wuhan, Hubei, China

    Xing Lu

  2. Foundation for Advancement of International Science, Tsukuba, Japan

    Takeshi Akasaka

  3. School of Materials Science and Engineering, Huangzhou University of Science and Technology, Wuhan, Hebei, China

    Zdenek Slanina

Section Editor information

  1. School of Material Science and Engineering, Huazhong University of Science and Technology, Wuhan, PR China

    Zdeněk Slanina

Additional information

Dedicated to Donald R. Huffman and to the memory of Ahmed El Goresy (1934–2019)

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© 2021 Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd.

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Krätschmer, W. (2021). Our Road to Fullerenes: A Personal Account. In: Lu, X., Akasaka, T., Slanina, Z. (eds) Handbook of Fullerene Science and Technology. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-13-3242-5_19-1

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-13-3242-5_19-1

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Singapore

  • Print ISBN: 978-981-13-3242-5

  • Online ISBN: 978-981-13-3242-5

  • eBook Packages: Springer Reference Chemistry and Mat. ScienceReference Module Physical and Materials ScienceReference Module Chemistry, Materials and Physics

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