Tiny buckybombs could make bacteria explode

Trying to fight off a virus army? Nanoscale explosives made from spherical carbon molecules could be the answer.

Buckyballs, made from 60 carbon atoms arranged like a football, are usually stable. But Vitaly Chaban of the University of Southern Denmark in Odense and his colleagues suspected that adding common explosive ingredients like nitrates could turn them into tiny buckybombs.

So they simulated a buckyball with 12 nitrate molecules added to the surface. These steal electrons from the carbon atoms, which provides the extra energy needed for ignition. When the buckybomb explodes, it should reach nearly 4000 °C in a billionth of a second.

Carbon nanotubes zapped with lasers are already known to blow up cancer cells, so real buckybombs could do the same, as well as fight viruses and bacteria.

The reactive molecular dynamics study of nitro-fullerene decomposition reported here provides, for the first time, a detailed chemical mechanism of explosion of a nanoscale carbon material. Upon initial heating, C60(NO2)12 disintegrates, increasing temperature and pressure by thousands of Kelvins and bars within tens of picoseconds.