BACKGROUND C60 fullerenes and single-walled carbon nanotubes (SWCNT) are projected to be used in medicine and consumer products with potential human exposure. The hazardous effects of these particles are expected to involve oxidative stress with generation of oxidatively damaged DNA that might be the initiating event in the development of cancer. OBJECTIVE In this study we investigated the ef...

Partition and localization of C60 and its derivative C60(OH)18-22 in lipid membranes and their impact on mitochondrial activity were studied, attempting to correlate those events with fullerene characteristics (size, surface chemistry, and surface charge). Fluorescence quenching studies suggested that C60(OH)18-22 preferentially populated the outer regions of the bilayer, whereas C60 preferred ...

It is known that silicon fullerenes cannot maintain perfect cage structures like carbon fullerenes. Previous density-functional theory calculations have shown that even with encapsulated species, nearly all endohedral silicon fullerenes exhibit highly puckered cage structures in comparison with their carbon counterparts. In this work, we present theoretical evidences that the tetrahedral fuller...

A fundamental chemical question concerning the fullerenes involves their aromatic nature. For many reasons, it is impossible to experimentally obtain anything that is similar to a resonance energy for a fullerene. We must therefore rely on information obtained from magnetic properties. Since fullerenes are borderless polycyclic conjugated systems with internal cavities, it is possible to study ...

A simple method for analyzing masses of water suspended fullerenes (nC60) in Daphnia magna by extracting to toluene and measuring by ultraviolet-vis spectrophotometry was developed. This method was used to assess bioaccumulation and depuration rates by daphnia after nC60 exposure in artificial freshwater. Accumulation was rapid during the first few hours, and based on accumulation modeling, 90%...

We study the spectral properties of two kinds of derivatives of the carbon fullerene C(60), small fullerenes and Si-heterofullerenes, by ab initio calculations. The principal method of study is the time-dependent density-functional theory in its full time-propagation form. C(20), C(28), C(32), C(36), and C(50), the most stable small fullerenes in the range of C(20)-C(50), are found to have char...