Synthesis of Fullerenes from a Nonaromatic Chloroform through a Newly Developed Ultrahigh-Temperature Flash Vacuum Pyrolysis Apparatus.

Hong-Gang Zhang,Piao-Yang Xu,Han-Rui Tian,Su-Yuan Xie,Ya-Qi Zhuo,Qianyan Zhang,Leng Zhang,Xiao-Min Zhang,Shui-Chao Lin,Lan-Sun Zheng

doi:10.3390/nano11113033

Abstract

The flash vacuum pyrolysis (FVP) technique is useful for preparing curved polycyclic aromatic compounds (PAHs) and caged nanocarbon molecules, such as the well-known corannulene and fullerene C60. However, the operating temperature of the traditional FVP apparatus is limited to ~1250 °C, which is not sufficient to overcome the high energy barriers of some reactions. Herein, we report an ultrahigh-temperature FVP (UT-FVP) apparatus with a controllable operating temperature of up to 2500 °C to synthesize fullerene C60 from a nonaromatic single carbon reactant, i.e., chloroform, at 1350 °C or above. Fullerene C60 cannot be obtained from CHCl3 using the traditional FVP apparatus because of the limitation of the reaction temperature. The significant improvements in the UT-FVP apparatus, compared to the traditional FVP apparatus, were the replacement of the quartz tube with a graphite tube and the direct heating of the graphite tube by impedance heating instead of indirect heating of the quartz tube using an electric furnace. Because of the higher temperature range, UT-FVP can not only synthesize fullerene C60 from single carbon nonaromatic reactants but sublimate some high-molecular-weight compounds to synthesize larger curved PAHs in the future.

Highlights

During the past three decades, fullerenes, carbon nanotubes, and graphene/graphene quantum dots have achieved great progress as representative carbon nanomaterials [1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8].Fullerene C60, one of the allotropes of carbon, was synthesized for the first time in 1985 by laser evaporation of graphite [1]
The pyrolysis temperature plays a crucial role in UT-flash vacuum pyrolysis (FVP) because it provides energy
FVP device increased, which can be attributed to the replacement of the quartz tube with a graphite tube and the use of an electrode to directly heat the graphite tube

Summary

Introduction

Fullerene C60 , one of the allotropes of carbon, was synthesized for the first time in 1985 by laser evaporation of graphite [1] These types of fullerene carbon nanomaterials with high conjugated cage-like structures have attracted significant attention owing to their special properties [9,10] and applications in areas such as biomedicine, catalysis, superconduction, and nonlinear optics [11,12,13,14,15], and especially in the electronic applications of photovoltaics, organic thermoelectrics, and electrochemical transistors [16,17,18,19,20].

Methods

Results

Conclusion