Give the electronic structure of a boron atom, one mark.
This would indicate that the bond between the two boron atoms is a rather weak single bond.
Eight more boron atoms connect the icosahedra to the other elements in the unit cell.
The boron atom is sp-hybridized and contains an empty p-orbital.
They lay down boron atoms first, then heat them in magnesium vapor at 1,500 degrees.
In certain diborynes the boron atoms are excited and the bond order is 3.
Thus, there are eight supericosahedra (1248 boron atoms) in the unit cell.
All those 80 sites are partially occupied and in total contain only about 42 boron atoms.
Two independent structure analyses came to the same conclusion that the total number of boron atoms in the unit cell is 1584.
Therefore, boron atoms occupy 2nd neighbor site forming a triangle.