Electronic structure of fullerenes with defects Original Research Article

We report a systematic study of electronic structures in the Hückel approximation for fullerenes with symmetrically arranged defects. We show that these hypothetical molecules present a closed electronic structure in many cases. Furthermore, we compare energy gaps with those of defect-free fullerenes showing that, in most cases, these gaps are wider for fullerenes with symmetrically arranged defects, so they seem to be chemically stable.