Research interest in fullerene fragments has become increasingly popular over the last several decades as a means of studying the impressive properties of known fullerenes. Not surprisingly, a majority of this research has focused on bowl-shaped fragments of C60 such as corannulene and sumanene. Remarkably, there has been little focus on synthesizing fragments of larger fullerenes, a task that often requires the incorporation of rings larger than 6-membered. As a push in this direction we have set our sights on C240. Our target subunit of C240 is unique in that it contains a central 8-membered ring which hasn't been previously incorporated into a bowl-shaped polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbon. Our synthetic strategy expands on Scott's synthesis of circumtrindene in which we take advantage of an Aldol cyclotetramerization and a palladium catalyzed arylation reaction to synthesize the bowl shaped molecule. Utilizing this synthetic strategy we hope to expand the synthesis to hemispheres of C240 to further study their electronic properties as well explore it's potential as an end cap in carbon nanotubes.

Synthesis and characterization of a bowl-shaped fragment of C<sub>240</sub>

248th National Meeting (2014)

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Synthesis and characterization of a bowl-shaped fragment of C240

Synthesis and characterization of a bowl-shaped fragment of C₂₄₀