Weighted HOMO-LUMO energy separations for the polyene references of fullerenes with up to 100 carbon atoms

The T value represents the HOMO-LUMO energy separation of a pi-electronic system weighted with the number of conjugated atoms. We found that this value is kept almost constant for the polyene references defined graph-theoretically for isolated-pentagon isomers of fullerenes with up to 100 carbon atoms. On this numerical basis, the T value can safely be considered as a realistic index of kinetic stability or chemical inertness for all fullerenes without abutting pentagons.