The discovery of boron buckyballs, consisting of eighty boron atoms (B80) in a football-like sphere, has been detailed in a paper by Hyun Wook Choi et al. published in Chemical Science.

How this affects you

Boron fullerite is predicted to be a semiconductor with an 0.8 eV energy gap and better electron acceptance, potentially leading to more practical applications than carbon buckyballs in electronics and materials science. This could open new avenues for material development.