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Updated: Jun 30, 2025

Preparation and Characterization of C60/Graphene Hybrid Nanostructures
Published on: May 15, 2018
Squeezing formaldehyde into C60 fullerene
Vijyesh K Vyas1, George R Bacanu1, Murari Soundararajan1
1School of Chemistry, University of Southampton, SO17 1BJ, Southampton, UK.
Abstract:
The cavity inside fullerene C60 provides a highly symmetric and inert environment for housing atoms and small molecules. Here we report the encapsulation of formaldehyde inside C60 by molecular surgery, yielding the supermolecular complex CH2O@C60, despite the 4.4 Å van der Waals length of CH2O exceeding the 3.7 Å internal diameter of C60. The presence of CH2O significantly reduces the cage HOMO-LUMO gap. Nuclear spin-spin couplings are observed between the fullerene host and the formaldehyde guest. The rapid spin-lattice relaxation of the formaldehyde 13C nuclei is attributed to a dominant spin-rotation mechanism. Despite being squeezed so tightly, the encapsulated formaldehyde molecules rotate freely about their long axes even at cryogenic temperatures, allowing observation of the ortho-to-para spin isomer conversion by infrared spectroscopy. The particle in a box nature of the system is demonstrated by the observation of two quantised translational modes in the cryogenic THz spectra.
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