Hollow Spherical Fullerene Obtained by Kinetically Controlled Liquid‐Liquid Interfacial Precipitation
Guoping Chen, Flavien Sciortino, Kotaro Takeyasu, Junji Nakamura, Jonathan P. Hill, Lok Kumar Shrestha, Katsuhiko Ariga
Abstract
Abstract Nanomaterials with hollow structures are expected to exhibit new functionalities for materials engineering. Here we report the fabrication of fullerene (C 60 ) spheres having different hollow structures by using a kinetically controlled liquid‐liquid interfacial precipitation (KC‐LLIP) method. For this purpose, 1,2‐ethylenediamine (EDA) was used as a covalent cross‐linker of C 60 molecules to form C 60 ‐EDA shells, while in‐situ generated EDA‐sulfur (EDA‐S) droplets were applied as ‘yolks’ being eliminated by washing following formation of the yolk‐shell structure, leading to hollow structures. Porous spheres, string hollow spheres, hollow spheres, and open hollow spheres have been synthesized by controlling the kinetics of nucleation of C 60 ‐EDA and the template EDA‐S growth. Isopropanol was used as an additive to control the discrepancy in growth rates of C 60 ‐EDA and EDA‐S. This simple KC‐LLIP preparation method is expected to facilitate the large‐scale fabrication and application of structured C 60 spheres in materials science and technology.