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Leaky soccer balls aren’t usually of much use. But now Henry Foley of the
University of Delaware in Newark and Mark Shiflett at nearby science company
DuPont have joined shards of soccer-ball-shaped buckminsterfullerene (C
₆₀) molecules to create a membrane riddled with pores only a handful of
atoms across. Different gases pass through the holes at different speeds. The
researchers used this property of the membrane to separate oxygen from nitrogen
in air—an important industrial process that usually requires large amounts
of energy and time (Science, vol 285, p 1902). “We’re excited by the
prospect of using this membrane for a wide variety of separation processes,”
says Foley.