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15 April 2017 - The belt wars

nanobelt.PNG An organic chemistry feat that the researchers themselves equate to the controlled synthesis of fullerene back in 2002: the synthesis of a new aromatic nanobelt that can be regarded as a nanotube segment (Povie et al. DOI). This blog has been covering loops, hoops, rings and belts before here, here and here including earlier work by one of the lead authors Kenichiro Itami.

For its size it is a complex molecule, the nomenclature has yet to be invented but it is a cyclacene and described as a belt segment of 6,6-CNT and as an isomer of 12-cyclophenacene. The final step in a 1% yield consisted of a Bis(cyclooctadiene)nickel(0) catalysed coupling reaction of the nanoring precursor shedding 12 equivalents of bromine. Main characteristics: near perfectly round with a diameter of 8.3 angstroms, two resonance structures dominate with the major one having 4 Clar sextets and the other one 2.