Chiral Fullerenes from Asymmetric Catalysis

Abstract

Fullerenes are among the most studied molecules during the last three decades, and therefore, a huge number of chemical reactions have been tested on these new carbon allotropes. However, the aim of most of the reactions carried out on fullerenes has been to afford chemically modified fullerenes that are soluble in organic solvents or even water in the search for different mechanical, optical, or electronic properties. Therefore, although a lot of effort has been devoted to the chemical functionalization of these molecular allotropes of carbon, important aspects in the chemistry of fullerenes have not been properly addressed. In particular, the synthesis of chiral fullerenes at will in an efficient manner using asymmetric catalysis has not been previously addressed in fullerene science. Thus, despite the fact that the chirality of fullerenes has always been considered a fundamental issue, the lack of a general stereoselective synthetic methodology has restricted the use of enantiopure fullerene derivatives, which have usually been obtained only after highly expensive HPLC isolation on specific chiral columns or prepared from a pool of chiral starting materials. In this Account, we describe the first stereodivergent catalytic enantioselective syntheses in fullerene science, which have allowed the highly efficient synthesis of enantiomerically pure derivatives with total control of the stereochemical result using metallic catalysts and/or organocatalysts under very mild conditions. Density functional theory calculations strongly support the experimental findings for the assignment of the absolute configuration of the new stereocenters, which has also been ascertained by application of the sector rule and single-crystal X-ray diffraction. The use of the curved double bond of fullerene cages as a two-π-electron component in a variety of stereoselective cycloaddition reactions represents a challenging goal considering that, in contrast to most of the substituted olefins used in these reactions, pristine fullerene is a noncoordinating dipolarophile. The aforementioned features make the study of stereoselective 1,3-dipolar cycloadditions onto fullerenes a unique scenario to shed light onto important mechanistic aspects. On the other hand, the availability of achiral starting materials as well as the use of nonexpensive asymmetric catalysts should provide access to chiral fullerenes and their further application in a variety of different fields. In this regard, in addition to biomedical applications, chiral fullerenes are of interest in less-studied areas such as materials science, organic electronics, and nanoscience, where control of the order and morphology at the nanometer scale are critical issues for achieving better device efficiencies.

Synthesis and ultrafast spectroscopic study of new [6,6]methanofullerenes

“…Aer 3 hours, o-dichlorobenzene solution of fullerene[60] was added and temperature was raised to 80 C. The progress of the reaction was monitored by TLC. The reaction completes faster compared to (1). Reaction mixture was evaporated in rota-vapor and put on silica gel column for purication.…”

Facile Synthesis of Water-Soluble Fullerene (C60) Nanoparticles via Mussel-Inspired Chemistry as Efficient Antioxidants

“…Fullerenes, the classic 0-dimensional carbon-based nanomaterials with a closed-cage structure, have spurred wide-spread interest and exploration in various research fields due to their versatility since 1985 [1][2][3]. Constructed of covalently bonded carbon atoms featuring a spherical molecular structure, fullerenes display exceptional properties such as electron deficiency and reactive exteriors, which enable them as functional materials suitable for nanomedicine or drug delivery [3][4][5], cosmetic [6], catalysis [7,8], organic and perovskite solar cells [9,10], etc. [11][12][13].…”

Szeged Matrix Property Indices as Descriptors to Characterize Fullerenes

“…Fullerenes received attention from the researchers all over the word and led to the synthesis of new compounds [1][2][3][4] and identification of different applications due to their hardness, high electron affinity, increased incident light intensity, and biological activities [5][6][7].…”