Eur. Phys. J. D 16, 341-343 (2001)
https://doi.org/10.1007/s100530170125

Inorganic nanotubes and fullerenes

Structure and properties of hypothetical phosphorus fullerenes

¹ Theoretische Physik, Universität-GH Paderborn, 33098 Paderborn, Germany
² Department of Physical Chemistry, University of Geneva, 1211 Genève, Switzerland
³ University of Exeter, School of Chemistry, Exeter, EX4 4QD, UK

Corresponding author: ^a seifert@phys.uni-paderborn.de

Received: 24 November 2000
Published online: 15 September 2001

Abstract

The possibility of stable non-carbon fullerenes is discussed for the case of phosphorus fullerene-like cage structures. On the basis of Density Functional Tight Binding calculations it is shown that many such cages correspond to metastable structures, but with increasing nuclearity become less stable with respect to separate molecular P₄ units. Stability rules, known for carbon fullerenes, such as the "isolated pentagon rule" , do not reflect the different electronic and steric requirements of the phosphorus atom. The computational results tend to rule out phosphorus fullerenes.