I reported the discovery of a new allotrope of carbon, the C18 cyclocarbon, back in 2019. It took a while, but the groups involved in that paper have now presented another new ring molecule made only of carbon, C16. This time the extra challenge is in the fact that it is anti-aromatic (hosting 4n rather than 4n+2 atoms in the ring). A group in China has also produced several such rings in different sizes with a similar method. Their papers aren't officially published yet but available as preprints.
My news story in Chemistry World is out now (open access if you haven't used up your monthly quota of free stories):
Carbon's anti-aromatic allotrope is ringing the changes
The paper is out in Nature online (but not in this week's issue) and is on open access. UPDATE The paper is now in the issue of 29.11.2023, page 977, together with one of the papers from the Wei Xu's group, on page 972
And here is the recipe:
Source: © Yueze Gao et al 2023
The precursor 4 is deposited on a NaCl surface and the carbon monoxide and halogen masking groups are then eliminated to give the cyclocarbon C16
No comments:
Post a Comment