Production and isolation of an ellipsoidal C-80 fullerene

We report the first successful production and isolation of a new C-80 isomer together with C-13 NMR structural and UV-VIS-NIR spectroscopic studies of the purified sample; C-13 NMR results unambiguously suggest that the new C-80 isomer has an ellipsoidal structure with D-5d symmetry.