Haeckelites

Haeckelites are members of a proposed family of hypothetical carbon allotropes.

The carbon atoms would be arranged in a trivalently coordinated structure generated by a periodic arrangement of pentagonal, hexagonal and heptagonal carbon rings.

They have not yet been synthesised in the laboratory, but have been the subject of a considerable amount of theoretical work and numerical simulation.

They were first proposed by Humberto and Mauricio Terrones and their colleagues in 2000.

[2] They were named in honour of Ernst Haeckel, whose diagrams of Radiolaria and Phaeodarea contained similar structural features.

Haeckelite 8–4 structure containing square and octagonal rings [ 1 ]
ink illustration of protists
Artful illustrations of protists by Ernst Haeckel inspired the name, like this plate depicting a fullerene -like Aulonia