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FORGET football, buckyballs are bouncing around the volleyball court these days. Volleyballene is the first buckyball to be spiked with scandium atoms.

Discovered in 1985, the original buckyball was a hollow, stable sphere of 60 carbon atoms. It takes high temperatures and pressures without complaint and helped earn its creators a Nobel prize in chemistry in 1996.

Volleyballene has 60 carbon atoms moulded into pentagons, plus 20 scandium atoms locked in octagons, an arrangement that resembles the panels of a volleyball ().

Jing Wang at Hebei Normal University in China and colleagues tested five other configurations to see if a different mash-up proved easier to make, stronger, or more stable. Only volleyballene held its shape up to 727 °C, or 1000 kelvin.

This article appeared in print under the headline “Buckyballs play a different sport”