Abstract
Fullerenes exhibit fascinating physical and chemical properties, rendering promising applications in such functional devices as organic solar cells, light emitting diodes, field effect transistors, and sensors. Constructing ordered micro- or nano-sized fullerene molecular assemblies is crucial for realizing such applications. We developed a universal approach to prepare shape-tunable three-dimensional (3D) crystals of several metal nitride clusterfullerenes (NCFs), including cubes and dices (i.e., hollow cubes with holes at the center of each faces), which can be readily switched by changing the volume ratio of good (mesitylene) and poor (isopropanol) solvents, or turning on/off ultrasonication upon mixing the good/poor (mesitylene/isopropanol) solvents. The 3D nanocrystals were applied in electrocatalysis, revealing the improved methanol oxidation reaction (MOR) activity compared to the cubic-shaped Sc3N@C80 crystals due to its larger surface area resulting from the dice (hole) structure. Moreover, due to the enhanced light absorption, the dice-shaped crystals exhibited anomalously enhanced photoluminescence (PL) relative to that of the cubes.
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