Buckyballs: a New World of Nanotechnology

Novel drug delivery systems constitute the main stay of pharmaceutical research and development. Various novel drug delivery systems exists in the pharmaceuticals and one of such delivery system is nanoparticles. Nanoparticles are monolithic systems in which the drug is adsorbed, dissolved, or dispersed throughout the matrix. There are various forms of nanoparticles, out of which a newer and novel system is buckyballs. Buckyball is a member of a class of carbon structures called fullerenes. Hence they are also known as Buckminsterfullerene or fullerene. They are discovered by British scientist Harry Kroto in 1985 and the arrangement of the atoms resembled the shape of the geodesic domes invented by architect Buckminster Fuller and hence the nanostructure is named as Buckyballs. Buckyballs are made of 60 carbon atoms formed in the shape of a hollow ball and are similar in structure to graphite, which is composed of a sheet of linked hexagonal rings but they contain pentagonal (or sometimes heptagonal) rings that prevent the sheet from being planar. Various experimental studies have been done, still going on to prove it to be advantageous and perfectly fit for the pharmaceutical field