Room temperature synthesis of water-soluble spherical particles of a uniform diameter composed of carbon nanobelts and C60 molecules

Abstract

A carbon nanobelt (CNB) is a loop of fused benzene rings and in a sense a cutout of a single-walled carbon nanotube. Various types of CNBs have been successfully synthesized in recent years and CNBs have been utilized for the development of practical devices. A C60 molecule is a football shaped fullerene composed of 60 carbon atoms. Patterns and structures formed by atoms, molecules and particles via bottom-up self-assembly are of great interest and importance not only from a scientific point of view but for the design and production of functional materials and devices, the size of which ranges from nano to macroscopic scales. Colloidal particles are commonly used/utilized in mechanical, chemical and biophysical/biochemical/biomedical engineering, where size uniformity and mono dispersibility of the particles in the solvent, particularly in water, become crucial factors. In this study, we investigate secondary structures formed by (6,6)CNBs and C60 molecules, which are dissolved in 1,2-dichlorobenzene. We find that uniform spherical particles are formed by (6,6)CNBs and C60 molecules in 1,2-dichlorobenzene at room temperature via bottom-up self-assembly, setting the molar concentrations of (6,6)CNBs and C60 molecules at appropriate values, and furthermore those particles are monodisperse even in water. The present facile room temperature synthetic methodology may well be applied to the creation of nano/micro structures/materials using basic carbon nano units such as cycloparaphenylene (CPP, carbon nanorings) and fullerenes; e.g., C60, C70 and C59N.