Sandwiching saturation number of fullerene graphs

The saturation number of a graph G is the cardinality of any smallest maximal matching of G, and it is denoted by s(G). Fullerene graphs are cubic planar graphs with exactly twelve 5-faces; all the other faces are hexagons. They are used to capture the structure of carbon molecules. Here we show that the saturation number of fullerenes on n vertices is essentially n/3.

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