Water Assisted Growth of C60 Rods and Tubes by Liquid–Liquid Interfacial Precipitation Method

Molecules

Hamid Reza Barzegar¹  Florian Nitze¹  Artur Malolepszy¹  Leszek Stobinski¹  Cheuk-Wai Tai¹ 

[1] ¹Department of Physics, Umea University, Umea SE-901 87, Sweden

关键词: fullerene;    C₆₀ rods;    C₆₀ tubes;    LLIP method;    water-ethanol mixture;   

DOI  :  10.3390/molecules17066840

来源: mdpi

【 摘 要 】

C₆₀ nanorods with hexagonal cross sections are grown using a static liquid–liquid interfacial precipitation method in a system of C₆₀/m-dichlorobenzene solution and ethanol. Adding water to the ethanol phase leads instead to C₆₀ tubes where both length and diameter of the C₆₀ tubes can be controlled by the water content in the ethanol. Based on our observations we find that the diameter of the rods/tubes strongly depends on the nucleation step. We propose a liquid-liquid interface growth model of C₆₀ rods and tubes based on the diffusion rate of the good C₆₀ containing solvent into the poor solvent as well as on the size of the crystal seeds formed at the interface between the two solvents. The grown rods and tubes exhibit a hexagonal solvate crystal structure with m-dichlorobenzene solvent molecules incorporated into the crystal structure, independent of the water content. An annealing step at 200 °C at a pressure < 1 kPa transforms the grown structures into a solvent-free face centered cubic structure. Both the hexagonal and the face centered cubic structures are very stable and neither morphology nor structure shows any signs of degradation after three months of storage.

【 授权许可】

CC BY   
This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY) which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.