Spherical Aromaticity in Fullerenes and the Nucleus-Independent Chemical Shifts at the Cage Centers

Nucleus-independent chemical shifts (NICSs) at the cage centers for closed-shell isolated-pentagon isomers of C82 fullerene lie in the wide range from -11 to +48 although all of the isomers are sufficiently aromatic. This decisively shows that NICS cannot be used as an indicator of spherical aromaticity for fullerenes. NICS is nothing other than the measure of local magnetotropicity. Diatropicity is compatible with aromaticity only for monocyclic (pi)-systems.