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Two‐Dimensional Fullerene Assembly from an Exfoliated van der Waals Template
Author(s) -
Lee Kihong,
Choi Bonnie,
Plante Ilan JenLa,
Paley Maria V.,
Zhong Xinjue,
Crowther Andrew C.,
Owen Jonathan S.,
Zhu Xiaoyang,
Roy Xavier
Publication year - 2018
Publication title -
angewandte chemie international edition
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 5.831
H-Index - 550
eISSN - 1521-3773
pISSN - 1433-7851
DOI - 10.1002/anie.201800953
Subject(s) - van der waals force , monolayer , materials science , fullerene , monomer , polymerization , nanotechnology , cluster (spacecraft) , layer (electronics) , absorption (acoustics) , absorption spectroscopy , chemical engineering , crystallography , molecule , polymer , chemistry , organic chemistry , optics , composite material , physics , engineering , programming language , computer science
Two‐dimensional (2D) materials are commonly prepared by exfoliating bulk layered van der Waals crystals. The creation of synthetic 2D materials from bottom‐up methods is an important challenge as their structural flexibility will enable chemists to tune the materials properties. A 2D material was assembled using C 60 as a polymerizable monomer. The C 60 building blocks are first assembled into a layered solid using a molecular cluster as structure director. The resulting hierarchical crystal is used as a template to polymerize its C 60 monolayers, which can be exfoliated down to 2D crystalline nanosheets. Derived from the parent template, the 2D structure is composed of a layer of inorganic cluster, sandwiched between two monolayers of polymerized C 60 . The nanosheets can be transferred onto solid substrates and depolymerized by heating. Electronic absorption spectroscopy reveals an optical gap of 0.25 eV, narrower than that of the bulk parent crystalline solid.