Playing with the Soccer Ball-an Experimental Introduction to Fullerene Chemistry

Abstract

The "molecule of the year 1991", C60 buckminsterfullerene, has found its way to experimental chemistry courses in high schools and universities. For the first time a selection of simple experiments with C60 on high-school and university level are presented: the bromination with Winkler's solution, hydroxylation with an alkaline permanganate solution, cycloadditions of dichlorcarbene and cyclopentadiene and the formation of a molecular complex with o-dimethoxybenzene. They are easy to carry out due to the high reactivity of C60. The experiments demonstrate some chemical properties of this new form of carbon. C60 reacts like a giant alkene with electron acceptor properties. To stress this fact, one should compare C60 with other alkenes and aromatic compounds. The characteristic color change of the C60 solutions during the reactions make them easy to observe, even without spectroscopic methods.

Nanostructures in Physical Materials Chemistry: An Exploratory Laboratory

“…While nanotechnology has been a rapidly growing area of science, there are few published laboratories for the undergraduate chemistry curriculum, and a majority of those are concerned with C 60 [51][52][53][54][55][56][57][58] , or Sr 2+ to adsorb cations, gently drying the mixture. Take graphite and fluorinated graphite through the same procedure as the controls (soak in just a matching acid solution).…”

Constrained Carbenes

“…The C-C bonds at the 6,6-ring junctions behave like alkene moieties whereby fullerenes undergo addition reactions with diazo compounds [8,63,64] and carbenes. [63,65] Indeed, multiple additions can occur. …”

“…[94] Rather, this system exemplifies PTC leading to carbene formation, [89] for example, the addition of CCl 2 to (C 60 -I h )[5,6]fullerene (Scheme 3). [65] Like micelles, crown ethers have been used as phase-transfer catalysts during the biphasic generation of CCl 2 from CHCl 3 . [95] Sometimes, the aqueous phase itself may be omitted because ionic compounds, like tBuOK, experience enhanced solubility in organic solvents doped with crown ethers, cf.…”

Photoacoustic Calorimetry: An Undergraduate Physical-Organic Experiment

“…7 ), many articles concerning the characterization of C 60 have appeared in this Journal(8)(9)(10). C 60 is an excellent example of a compound whose photophysical properties are uniquely determined by PAC(11).…”