Fullerenes and coordination polyhedra versus half-cube embeddings

A fullerene F(n) is a 3-regular (or cubic) polyhedral carbon molecule for which the n vertices the carbons atoms - are arranged in 12 pentagons and (n/2 - 10) hexagons. Only a finite number of fullerenes are expected to be, up to scale, isometrically embeddable into a hypercube. Looking for the list of such fullerenes, we first check the embeddability of all fullerenes F(n) for n < 60 and of all preferable fullerenes C(n) for n < 86 and their duals. Then, we consider some infinite families, including fullerenes with icosahedral symmetry, which describe virus capsids, onion-like metallic clusters and geodesic domes. Quasi-embeddings and fullerene analogues are considered. We also present some results on chemically relevant polyhedra such as coordination polyhedra and cluster polyhedra. Finally we conjecture that the list of known embeddable fullerenes is complete and present its relevance to the Katsura model for vesicles cells. (C) 1998 Published by Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.