All-carbon supramolecular complexation of a bilayer molecular nanographene with [60] and [70]fullerenes

Abstract

Supramolecular chemistry of carbon-based materials provides a variety of chemical structures with potential applications in materials science and biomedicine. Here, we explore the supramolecular complexation of fullerenes C60 and C70, highlighting the ability of molecular nanographene tweezers to capture these structures. The binding constant for the CNG-1⸧C70 complex was significantly higher than for CNG-1⸧C60, showing clear selectivity for the more π-extended C70. DFT calculations confirmed these experimental results by showing that the interaction energy of C70 with CNG-1 is more than 5 kcal/mol higher than that of C60. The theoretical calculations nicely predict that the dispersion interaction provides about 58-59% of the total interaction energy, followed by electrostatic attraction with 26% and orbital interactions, which contribute 15-16%. The racemic nanographene tweezers effectively recognize fullerene molecules and hold promise for future applications in chiral molecule recognition

A. J. S. and M. S. thanks the Ministerio de Ciencia, Innovación y Universidades (MCIN/AEI/10.13039/50110001103) (Projects PID2023-147424NB-I00, PID2023-146849NB-I00, RED2022-134939-T, and FPI predoctoral grant to C. C.) and the Generalitat de Catalunya (Project 2021-SGR-623). A. J. S. gratefully acknowledge Polish high-performance computing infrastructure PLGrid (HPC Center: ACK Cyfronet AGH) for providing computer facilities and support within computational grant no. PLG/2023/016841.

M. B., S. F., and N. M. acknowledge financial support from the Spanish MICIN (project PID2020-114653RB-I00), they also acknowledge financial support from the ERC (SyG TOMATTO ERC-2020-951224) and from the ‘(MAD2D-CM)-UCM’ project funded by Comunidad de Madrid, by the Recovery, Transformation and Resilience Plan and by NextGenerationEU from the European Union. M. B. also acknowledges financial support from the Spanish MICIN (project CTQ2017-83531-R)