Some aspects of the symmetry and topology of possible carbon allotrope structures (Q1126940)

Fullerenes obey the isolated pentagon rule in which all pentagonal faces are completely surrounded by hexagons in a way that no two pentagonal faces share an edge. Among them, the smallest ones are the truncated icosahedral C\(_{60}\) of the \(I_h\) symmetry and ellipsoidal C\(_{70}\) of the \(D_{5h}\) symmetry. The energy levels of the bonding molecular orbitals of fullerenes with the \(I_h\) symmetry and 60\(n^2\) carbon atoms are approximated by spherical harmonics. If fullerenes are treated as built from carbon networks of positive curvature, the corresponding carbon allotropes constructed from carbon networks of negative curvature are the polymeric schwarzites. The negative curvature in the latter ones is introduced by means of heptagons or octagons of the carbon atoms and then the schwarzites are constructed by placing such carbon networks on the minimal surfaces with a negative Gaussian curvature. The smallest unit cell of the schwarzite structure with hexagons and heptagons only contains 168 carbon atoms and has a local \(O_h\) point group symmetry. Its larger permutational group is the PSL(2,7) group of order 168 and analogous to the icosahedral pure rotation group \(I\) of order 60 of the C\(_{60}\) fullerene considered as the isomorphous PSL(2,5) group.