Chordate - 11-3-2011 at 00:55
I was reading through some light literature this week and stumbled across a few papers/presentation which have me quite excited. I hope that this is
something which we all can play with and expand upon.
First, I was learning about functionalization of fullerenes and their purification, when I stumbled across this gem:
A Nonmetal Catalyst for Molecular Hydrogen Activation with Comparable Catalytic Hydrogenation Capability to Noble Metal Catalyst.
Highlights for those without library access: they achieved approximately 100 percent conversion of 1 gram of nitrobenzene to aniline with 36
milligrams of C60 irradiated with an Hg lamp for 4 hours.
Cool right? Makes you want to get a gram and start playing: see how sensitive it is to poisoning and steric hindrance. See if the kinetics are
favorable across a broad variety of substrates. See if works well with catalytic transfer hydrogenation. Hell, if I had a grant I might even go so far
as to try and achieve partial reduction by functionalizing the c60.
So I hop on over to my supplier and discover... ugh, even mixed fullerenes cost over 100 a gram.
So I started looking into how fullerenes are made and purified, and discovered the high cost is currently caused by the difficulty in purifying them
from crude fullerene soot. During this search I found a second useful bit of information.
According to this PDF, Fullerene soot might be catalytically active even in its impure form!
Fullerene soot is cheap. 30 bucks a gram.
It can even be made at home by arcing two graphite electrodes together under an inert atmosphere.
Here is an apparatus designed to do this.
And here is a book detailing other general methods of fullerene production
This is too juicy to not play with. The potential rewards are DIY catalytic hydrogenation reagents. Discuss!
[Edited on 11-3-2011 by Chordate]
paulr1234 - 13-3-2011 at 10:32
I found this supplier for SWNT's who have good pricing, although I have not bought from them yet.
http://cheaptubes.com/carbon-nanotubes-prices.htm
They have just listed 99% pure C60 fullerenes for $16,000 a kilo, no gram quantities posted yet.
By comparison, their SWNTs sell for $175,000 per kilo and $200 per gram, so they don't, usually, charge much of a premium for small quantities.
There are also many inexpensive sources in China.
I have quite a different interest in these materials so don't have much more to add, although I think you probably want to watch for metallic
impurities over, say, non-ordered carbon soot.
[Edited on 13-3-2011 by paulr1234]
Chordate - 13-3-2011 at 11:12
Thanks for the referral. I sent them an email asking if they'd source it in gram quantities. Cheap C60 will make this a much more attainable goal.