Thermal treatment of water-soluble particles formed by compounds composed of carbon nanobelts and C molecules.

It was previously shown that spherical particles are self-assembled by compounds composed of C-(6,6)CNB-C, where CNB stands for "carbon nanobelt", by mixing two individual solutions of C and (6,6)CNB molecules dissolved in 1,2-dichlorobenzene at room temperature. The particles are monodisperse in water thanks to their high absolute value of the zeta potential in water. In this report, we investigate the effect of thermal treatment of the particles on some changes in the physical properties and structures.

Room temperature synthesis of water-soluble spherical particles of a uniform diameter composed of carbon nanobelts and C molecules.

A carbon nanobelt (CNB) is a loop of fused benzene rings and a C molecule is a football shaped fullerene composed of 60 carbon atoms. In this study, we synthesize uniform spherical particles composed of (6,6)CNBs and C molecules in 1,2-dichlorobenzene at room temperature via bottom-up self-assembly, setting the molar concentrations of (6,6)CNBs and C molecules at appropriate values, and find that the particles are monodisperse even in water. The present room temperature synthetic methodology may well be applied to the creation of nano/micro structures/materials using basic carbon nano units such as cycloparaphenylene (CPP, carbon nanorings) and fullerenes; e.