Understanding the Reactivity of Fullerenes Through the Activation Strain Model

The Activation Strain Model of reactivity nowadays constitutes a powerful tool to aid quantitative understanding of chemical reactions, and also their design. This approach, combined with the Energy Decomposition Analysis method, has been really helpful for our current understanding of different fundamental transformations in chemistry. This Microreview illustrates the usefulness of this methodology in providing more insight into the chemistry of fullerenes. To this end, representative recent applications, ranging from the regioselectivity in Diels-Alder cycloaddition to the reactivity of endohedral fullerenes, are presented.