Buckyball as an Electron Donor in a Dyad of C60 and Xanthene Dye

Abstract

AbstractWe successfully achieved the synthesis of C60‐xanthlium, X60_NTf2, where fullerene is an electron donor and xanthlium is an electron acceptor. When the precursor compound X60‐OH was excited at 550 nm, the C60 emission was observed at 715 nm. On the other hand, the fluorescence of X60_NTf2 was completely quenched under the same conditions, suggesting that photo‐induced intramolecular electron transfer (ET) occurred from the singlet excited state of C60. The electrochemical measurement proved that the X60_NTf2 is exothermically possible of ET reaction from 1C60* to xanthylium to form C60.+. Density functional theory (DFT) calculations support the acceptor ability of the xanthylium by showing that the coefficients of the lowest unoccupied molecular orbital (LUMO) were on xanthene moiety. This is a well‐arranged model compound to investigate the properties of transiently generated fullerene radical cations.