Expanding the World of Endohedral Fullerenes—The Tm3N@C2n (39≤n≤43) Clusterfullerene Family

✍ Scribed by Matthias Krause; Joanna Wong; Lothar Dunsch

• Publisher: John Wiley and Sons
• Year: 2005
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 142 KB
• Volume: 11
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0947-6539
• DOI: 10.1002/chem.200400673

✦ Synopsis

Abstract

A new family of endohedral fullerenes, based on an encaged trithulium nitride (Tm~3~N) cluster, was synthesised, isolated and characterised by HPLC, mass spectrometry, and visible‐NIR and FTIR spectroscopy. Tm~3~N clusterfullerenes with cages as small as C~76~ and as large as C~88~ were prepared and six of them were isolated. Tm~3~N@C~78~ is a small clusterfullerene. The two isomers of Tm~3~N@C~80~ (I and II) were the most abundant structures in the fullerene soot. Tm~3~N@C~82~, Tm~3~N@C~84~, and Tm~3~N@C~86~ represent a new series of higher clusterfullerenes. All six isolated Tm~3~N clusterfullerenes were classified as large energy‐gap structures with optical energy gaps between ∼1.2 and ∼1.75 eV. Tm~3~N@C~80~ (I) and Tm~3~N@C~80~ (II) were assigned to the C~80~ cages C~80~:7 (I~h~) and C~80~:6 (D~5__h__~). For Tm~3~N@C~78~, the analysis pointed to an elliptical carbon cage with C~78~:1 (D~3~) or C~78~:4 (D~3__h__~) being the probable structures.