Fullerene graphs of small diameter

Abstract

A fullerene graph is a cubic bridgeless plane graph with only pentagonal and hexagonal faces. We exhibit an infinite family of fullerene graphs of diameter $\sqrt{4n/3}$, where $n$ is the number of vertices. This disproves a conjecture of Andova and \v{S}krekovski [MATCH Commun. Math. Comput. Chem. 70 (2013) 205-220], who conjectured that every fullerene graph on $n$ vertices has diameter at least $\lfloor \sqrt{5n/3}\rfloor-1$.