Detection and Isolation of Isomerically Pure C120 Fullertubes

The emergence of macroscopic amounts of C60 fullerenes and carbon nanotubes in the 1990s has led to an explosion of growth in new structures of carbon nanomaterials. Over the last decades, there have been theoretical predictions of a particular “hybrid” family of mathematical structures. Fullertubes represent a new area of fundamental research in molecular carbon. They are similar to fullerenes in structure, but with increasingly long cylindrical, single-wall nanotube belts in the middle of the molecules. These nanotube belts are similar to single-layer, rolled graphene. In 2020 we published the isomeric separation and characterization of [5,5] C90-D5h fullertubes and [5,5] C100-D5d fullertubes. In this presentation, we will report and discuss the first isolation and UV-vis characterization of pristine and unfunctionalized C120 fullertubes. The separation and isolation of larger fullertubes is a two-step purification process. First, the spheroidal fullerene contaminants must be removed from the carbon soot extract to enrich the sample in fullertubes. Then in the second step, HPLC is used to achieve isomerically purified and pristine fullertubes. Efforts to characterize these newly isolated C120 fullertubes are currently underway.