Near‐Infrared‐Absorbing Chiral Open [60]Fullerenes
Yoshifumi Hashikawa, Shumpei Sadai, Shu Okamoto, Yasujiro Murata
Abstract
Abstract Though [60]fullerene is an achiral molecular nanocarbon with I h symmetry, it could attain an inherent chirality depending upon a functionalization pattern. The conventional chiral induction of C 60 relies mainly upon a multiple addition affording a mixture of achiral and chiral isomers while their chiral function would be largely offset by the existence of pseudo‐mirror plane(s). These are major obstacles to proceed further study on fullerene chirality and yet leave its understanding elusive. Herein, we showcase a carbene‐mediated synthesis of C 1 ‐symmetric chiral open [60]fullerenes showing an intense far‐red to near‐infrared absorption. The large dissymmetry factor of | g abs |=0.12 was achieved at λ =820 nm for circular dichroism in benzonitrile. This is, in general, unachievable by other small chiral organic molecules, demonstrating the potential usage of open [60]fullerenes as novel types of chiral chromophores.