Abstract
METALLOFULLERENES1,2consist of metal atoms trapped inside closed fullerene cages. Virtually nothing is known about the mechanism of metallofullerene synthesis, although the possibility of a condensed-phase mechanism has been suggested in recent studies3,4. Here we show that laser vaporization of a La2O3/graphite rod produces a number of LaC60+ isomers, including the endohedral metallofullerene and a variety of different isomers in which lanthanum seems to be bound to polycyclic polyyne rings. When heated, nearly all of the different ring isomers convert spontaneously into metallofullerenes, trapping the metal atom inside the fullerene cage with remarkably high efficiency (>98%). We suggest that in the first step of this annealing process the lanthanum atom acts as a nucleation centre and the carbon rings arrange themselves around the lanthanum atom before converting into a fullerene cage.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Heath, J. R. et al. J. Am. chem. Soc. 107, 7779–7780 (1985).
Bethune, D. S., Johnson, R. D., Salem, J. R., deVries, M. S. & Yannoni, C. S. Nature 366, 123–128 (1993).
Chai, Y. et al. J. phys. Chem. 96, 7564–7568 (1991).
McElvaney, S. W. J. phys. Chem. 96, 4935–4937 (1992).
McElvaney, S. W., Ross, M. M., Goroff, N. S. & Diederich, R. Science 259, 1594–1596 (1993).
Hunter, J. M., Fye, J. & Jarrold, M. F. Science 260, 784–786 (1993).
von Helden, G., Gotts, N. & Bowers, M. T. Nature 363, 60–63 (1993).
Hunter, J. M., Fye, J. L., Roskamp, E. J. & Jarrold, M. F. J. phys. Chem. (in the press).
von Helden, G., Hsu, M.-T., Kemper, P. R. & Bowers, M. T. J. chem. Phys. 95, 3835–3837 (1991).
Mason, E. A. & McDaniel, E. W. Transport Properties of Ions in Gases (Wiley, New York, 1988).
Jarrold, M. F. & Bower, J. E. J. chem. Phys. 98, 2399–2407 (1993).
Rosenstock, H. M., Draxl, K., Steiner, B. W. & Herron, J. T. J. phys. Chem. Ref. Data (Suppl. No. 1) 6, (1977).
Zimmerman, J. A., Eyler, J. R., Bach, S. B. & McElvany, S. W. J. chem. Phys. 94, 3556–3562 (1991).
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Clemmer, D., Shelimov, K. & Jarrold, M. Gas-phase self-assembly of endohedral metallofullerenes. Nature 367, 718–720 (1994). https://doi.org/10.1038/367718a0
Received:
Accepted:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/367718a0
- Springer Nature Limited
This article is cited by
-
Gated trapped ion mobility spectrometry coupled to fourier transform ion cyclotron resonance mass spectrometry
International Journal for Ion Mobility Spectrometry (2016)
-
Fundamentals of Trapped Ion Mobility Spectrometry
Journal of the American Society for Mass Spectrometry (2015)