C60 as a Faraday cage

Endohedral fullerenes have been proposed for a number of technological uses, for example, as a nanoscale switch, memory bit and as qubits for quantum computation. For these technology applications, it is important to know the ease with which the endohedral atom can be manipulated using an applied electric field. We find that the Buckminsterfullerene (C-60) acts effectively as a small Faraday cage, with only 25% of the field penetrating the interior of the molecule. Thus influencing the atom is difficult, but as a qubit the endohedral atom should be well shielded from environmental electrical noise. We also predict how the field penetration should increase with the fullerene radius. (C) 2004 American Institute of Physics.