  We present a theoretical study of the conductance and thermopower of
single-molecule junctions based on C60 and C60-terminated molecules. We first
analyze the transport properties of gold-C60-gold junctions and show that these
junctions can be highly conductive (with conductances above 0.1G0, where G0 is
the quantum of conductance). Moreover, we find that the thermopower in these
junctions is negative due to the fact that the LUMO dominates the charge
transport, and its magnitude can reach several tens of micro-V/K, depending on
the contact geometry. On the other hand, we study the suitability of C60 as an
anchoring group in single-molecule junctions. For this purpose, we analyze the
transport through several dumbbell derivatives using C60 as anchors, and we
compare the results with those obtained with thiol and amine groups. Our
results show that the conductance of C60-terminated molecules is rather
sensitive to the binding geometry. Moreover, the conductance of the molecules
is typically reduced by the presence of the C60 anchors, which in turn makes
the junctions more sensitive to the functionalization of the molecular core
with appropriate side groups.
