Polarizability as a landmark property for fullerene chemistry and materials science

The review summarizes data on dipole polarizability of fullerenes and their derivatives, covering the most widespread classes of fullerene-containing molecules (fullerenes, fullerene exohedral derivatives, fullerene dimers, endofullerenes, fullerene ions, and derivatives with ionic bonds). These are currently presented by experimental and mainly theoretical works. Particular attention is paid to the analysis of the computational data in terms of additive schemes that assist in understanding the changes in polarizability upon fullerene functionalization and provide a general formula for calculation of polarizability for certain classes of the exohedral derivatives. Additionally, application of polarizability to the physical and chemical problems of fullerene science is discussed. It includes aspects of fullerene reactivity, physicochemical processes in carbon nanostructures (quenching of electronically-excited states, nanocapillarity, etc.) as well as use of fullerene adducts as electron-acceptor materials for organic solar cells and molecular switch devices.