Sponge-like molecular cage for purification of fullerenes

Cristina García-Simón, Marc Garcia-Borràs, Laura Gómez, Teodor Parella, Sílvia Osuna, Jordi Juanhuix, Inhar Imaz, Daniel Maspoch, Miquel Costas () and Xavi Ribas ()
Additional contact information
Cristina García-Simón: Institut de Química Computacional i Catàlisi and Departament de Química, Universitat de Girona, Campus Montilivi
Marc Garcia-Borràs: Institut de Química Computacional i Catàlisi and Departament de Química, Universitat de Girona, Campus Montilivi
Laura Gómez: Institut de Química Computacional i Catàlisi and Departament de Química, Universitat de Girona, Campus Montilivi
Teodor Parella: Servei de RMN and Departament de Química, Facultat de Ciències, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (UAB), Campus UAB
Sílvia Osuna: Institut de Química Computacional i Catàlisi and Departament de Química, Universitat de Girona, Campus Montilivi
Jordi Juanhuix: ALBA Synchrotron, Cerdanyola del Vallès
Inhar Imaz: Institut Català de Nanociència i Nanotecnologia, ICN2, Campus UAB
Daniel Maspoch: Institut Català de Nanociència i Nanotecnologia, ICN2, Campus UAB
Miquel Costas: Institut de Química Computacional i Catàlisi and Departament de Química, Universitat de Girona, Campus Montilivi
Xavi Ribas: Institut de Química Computacional i Catàlisi and Departament de Química, Universitat de Girona, Campus Montilivi

Nature Communications, 2014, vol. 5, issue 1, 1-9

Abstract: Abstract Since fullerenes are available in macroscopic quantities from fullerene soot, large efforts have been geared toward designing efficient strategies to obtain highly pure fullerenes, which can be subsequently applied in multiple research fields. Here we present a supramolecular nanocage synthesized by metal-directed self-assembly, which encapsulates fullerenes of different sizes. Direct experimental evidence is provided for the 1:1 encapsulation of C60, C70, C76, C78 and C84, and solid state structures for the host–guest adducts with C60 and C70 have been obtained using X-ray synchrotron radiation. Furthermore, we design a washing-based strategy to exclusively extract pure C60 from a solid sample of cage charged with a mixture of fullerenes. These results showcase an attractive methodology to selectively extract C60 from fullerene mixtures, providing a platform to design tuned cages for selective extraction of higher fullerenes. The solid-phase fullerene encapsulation and liberation represent a twist in host–guest chemistry for molecular nanocage structures.

Date: 2014
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.nature.com/articles/ncomms6557 Abstract (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nat:natcom:v:5:y:2014:i:1:d:10.1038_ncomms6557

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.nature.com/ncomms/

DOI: 10.1038/ncomms6557

Access Statistics for this article

Nature Communications is currently edited by Nathalie Le Bot, Enda Bergin and Fiona Gillespie

More articles in Nature Communications from Nature
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().