Title: Flexible decapyrrylcorannulene hosts

Authors: Yun-Yan Xu, Han-Rui Tian, Shu-Hui Li, Zuo-Chang Chen, Yang-Rong Yao, Shan-Shan Wang, Xin Zhang, Zheng-Zhong Zhu, Shun-Liu Deng, Qianyan Zhang, Shangfeng Yang, Su-Yuan Xie, Rong-Bin Huang & Lan-Sun Zheng

Abstract:

The assembly of spherical fullerenes, or buckyballs, into single crystals for crystallographic identification often suffers from disordered arrangement. Here we show a chiral configuration of decapyrrylcorannulene that has a concave ‘palm’ of corannulene and ten flexible electron-rich pyrryl group ‘fingers’ to mimic the smart molecular ‘hands’ for self-adaptably cradling various buckyballs in a (+)hand-ball-hand(−) mode. As exemplified by crystallographic identification of 15 buckyball structures representing pristine, exohedral, endohedral, dimeric and hetero-derivatization, the pyrryl groups twist with varying dihedral angles to adjust the interaction between decapyrrylcorannulene and fullerene. The self-adaptable electron-rich pyrryl groups, susceptible to methylation, are theoretically revealed to contribute more than the bowl-shaped palm of the corannulene in holding buckyball structures. The generality of the present decapyrrylcorannulene host with flexible pyrryl groups facilitates the visualization of numerous unknown/unsolved fullerenes by crystallography and the assembly of the otherwise close-packed spherical fullerenes into two-dimensional layered structures by intercalation.

Full-Link: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-019-08343-6