Self-assembling ‘buckybowls’ inspired by virus capsids

A giant, self-assembling chemical sphere which researchers call a ‘buckybowl’ has been finally created 12 years after the team first came up with the idea.¹ Finding a way to make self-assembling regular spheres has been on supramolecular chemists’ wish list for a long time. To do that, you need to be able to make regular, convex polyhedrons.