Icosahedral symmetry super-carborane and beyond

Abstract

Nano-structures are often sought to be constructed from some especially stable multifunctional unit which can be manipulated into different desired forms. To this end an icosahedral borane or carborane unit is considered as a basic icosahedral building block, to build further larger nano-structures. A potential is noted for the formation of a sort of super-carborane unit, comprised of 12 carboranes at the nodes of a large icosahedron. A further possibility involves taking 12 of these icosahedrons at the corners of an even larger icosahedron, to yield a super-super-carborane structure – perhaps with acetyleneic linkages between the super-carborane units.