Kinetic instability of azafullerenes

Abstract

Many isomers of azafullerenes are predicted to be kinetically stable with positive or small negative bond resonance energies (BREs). However, none of them have been isolated in macroscopic amounts. This fact is presumably associated with the tendency for nascent azafullerenes to eliminate nitrogen atoms as N2 or CN. Thus, azafullerenes are among the rare examples whose kinetic instability cannot be predicted by the BRE method. However, if someone succeeds in isolating azafullerenes as solids, he or she may possibly notice that some of the isomers with a minBRE>−0.100|β| are fairly inert.