OMS Letters
Dear Sir,
Gas-phase Ion Chemistry of Carbon Suboxide
The chemistry of the particularly reactive atomic carbon, C,, and small carbon chains, C, , C, and C, , mainly produced by carbon arc and investigated in detail by Skell et a!.,' is nowadays receiving steady attention. In recent years, after the discovery and synthesis of fullerenes, c, and c, in particular have been the object of increasing interest. C, is proposed as the fundamental brick in the building of fullerenes, through the formation of linear chains that subsequently produce rings and fullerenes,2 their fragmentations, in turn, proceeding with continuous loss of C, and C, . , Carbon suboxide, C,O, , a small molecule containing the linear C, unit, should be an interesting synthon in the chemistry of C, networks. Known for nearly 90 years,, it has received particular attention by organic chemists and its unusual 'bis-ketene' structure has been widely investigated by both theoretical and experimental methods5 It is highly reactive on organic and organometallic substrates, as summarized in several reviews6
Carbon suboxide and its polymers have been taken into account as possible starting materials for the synthesis of biomolecules on the primitive Earth7 and poly(carbon suboxide)