SPring-8, the large synchrotron radiation facility

A research team led by Professor Shigeru Yamago of the Institute for Chemical Research, Kyoto University, succeeded in the chemical synthesis of new carbon nanostructures that have a ball-like structure of three-dimensionally connected benzene rings.

Carbon nanomolecules with a three-dimensional structure, such as fullerenes and carbon nanotubes, are the source of various functions that will be applied in the field of organic electronics including electronic and photoelectric materials. However, the variety of available molecular structures has been highly limited because these molecules are obtained by physical methods such as arc discharge.

By a unique synthesis method, the research group succeeded in the synthesis of new three-dimensional carbon nanomolecules that are difficult to obtain by conventional methods. Concretely, these nanomolecules were synthesized by forming a platinum complex with an octahedral structure using six platinum atoms and four tri-substituted benzene units through a “self-assembly”-like process and then eliminating the platinum atoms from the complex. The results of the measurements of the basic properties showed that these nanomolecules can be applied to charge-transfer materials that are used in organic electroluminescence (EL) elements and organic semiconductors. Also, the molecular structure of these nanomolecules was determined using the Crystal Structure Analysis Beamline (BL02B1) at SPring-8^*1.

Since there have been many reports on the synthesis of three-dimensional structures other than carbon nanomolecules by the self-assembly of metals and ligands, the application of this method will enable the synthesis of various new three-dimensional carbon nanomolecules. Also, the achievements of this research will significantly contribute to the creative research of new carbon nanostructures as well as the development of organic nanoelectronics materials.

This research was carried out as part of the research area “Development of High-Performance Nanostructures for Process Integration” of the Core Research for Evolutional Science and Technology (CREST) project supported by JST. The achievements were published online in the British scientific journal Nature Communications, an offshoot of the international scientific journal Nature, on 29 October 2013.