BRITAIN is unlikely to reap the commercial rewards of the most significant recent
breakthrough in chemistry - discovery of a new form of carbon - even though much of the
pioneering work was done at Sussex University.
The discovery of Buckminsterfullerene - a football-shaped molecule consisting of 60 carbon
atoms - has generated a vast amount of research literature, much of which has come from
Prof Harold Kroto's team at Sussex. "It is a huge area of research," he said yesterday.
However, Britain had failed to capture any of the hundred or so patents that came in the
wake of the discovery that carbon arises in a form other than graphite and diamond, said
Prof Kroto.
"Lightweight magnets called "soft magnets", organic superconductors that lose all resistance
to electricity at relatively high temperatures, molecule-scale electronics, new semi-conductors and even new drugs that inhibit HIV are expected to result in the next decade from Buckminsterfullerene," said Prof Kroto.
This week marks the tenth anniversary of the discovery of Buckminsterfullerene, a name coined because the atomic pattern is similar to that in the geodesic domes devised by the late American architect Buckminster Fuller.
Prof Kroto said it was now inevitable that Japan would exploit the molecule and its derivatives - such as "nano-tubes" - before Britain because of its greater investment in research. His efforts had been dogged by lack of investment in blue skies science in a mistaken effort to make scientists more industry literate than vice versa.
"Britain is killing off its fundamental science, the seeds of invention, when the problem is in
the development.
"I have been going around cap in hand to find a few thousand dollars," he said.
His team would have won the race to extract the molecule if it had received a grant of £20,000,
but it could not raise funding.
"If any companies had funded me at that time, they would now have every patent worth having," he said.
