Home > Inorganic chemistry of carbon

Perhaps best well known are the oxides of carbon, carbon dioxide and carbon monoxide. Other types include (but are not limited to) inorganic salts and complexes of the carbon-containing polyatomic ions, cyanide, cyanate , thiocyanate, carbonate, and carbide.

The known inorganic chemistry of the allotropes of carbon ( diamond, graphiteGraphite is one of the allotropes of carbon. See also allotropes of carbon. Unlike diamond, graphite is a conductor, and can be used, for instance, as the material in the electrodes of an electrical arc lamp. The pi orbital electrons delocalized across th, and the fullereneFullerenes are molecules composed entirely of carbon, taking the form of a hollow sphere, ellipsoid, tube, ring, or plane. They are sometimes called buckyballs . The molecule was named for Richard Buckminster Fuller, a noted architect who created the geods) blossomed with the discovery of buckminsterfullerene in the late twentieth century as additional fullerenes and their various derivatives were discovered. One such class of derivatives is inclusion compounds, in which an ion is enclosed by the all-carbon shell of the fullerene. This inclusion is denoted by the "@" symbol. For example, an ion consisting of a lithium ion trapped within buckminsterfullerene would be denoted C₆₀@Li⁺. As with any other ionic compound, this complex ion could in principle pair with a counterion to form a salt.