 Borophene can catalyze the breakdown of molecular hydrogen into hydrogen ions, and reduce water.Computational studies by I. Boustani and A. Quandt showed that small boron clusters do not adopt icosahedral geometries like boranes, instead they turn out to be quasi-planar (see Figure 2).This led to the discovery of a so-called Aufbau principle that predicts the possibility of borophene (boron sheets), boron fullerenes (borospherene) and boron nanotubes.