Fabrication Of Fullerene Micro/nanofibers

C₆₀ as a new member of carbon material family was discovered in 1980 s. Since its unique hollow structure and ?-conjugate bonds, C₆₀ has successfully attracted giant attentions in the areas of scientific research. However, as research continues C₆₀ limited itself for its 0-dimensional nanostructure step by step. Lucky with the discovery of carbon nanotubes?CNTs?, researchers started to seek new ideas to combine C₆₀ molecules into one-dimensional materials, which we call fullerene nanofibres?FNFs?. Usually we hold the view that FNFs integrates the advantages of C₆₀ and one-dimensional materials, adapts to either application areas. To be specific, FNFs maintain the unique physical-chemical properties of C₆₀ and the high length-diameter ratio of one-dimensional materials. Nowadays there is little knowledge on the formation mechanism of FNFs, and we lack effective means to control the length of FNFs. Based on these, we started our research seeking for some methods to regulate the size of FNFs, trying to gain better insights on the formation mechanism of FNFs, finally achieving these goals.For the fabrication of FNFs, we took a method called liquid-liquid interfacial precipitation?LLIP?, started in the pyridine-isopropanol?IPA? system. We took use of the charge transformation reaction between C₆₀ molecule and pyridine, stabilized the complexion temperature/ cultivating temperature and the volume ratio of pyridine and IPA, obtained FNFs with different length-diameter ratio via changing the complexion time of C₆₀-pyridine solution. Then, we focused our concentration on the relationship among three experiment factors: complexion time/ the content of charge transfer complex?CTC? of C₆₀-pyridine solution and the length of FNFs. Finally we proposed a growth mechanism of CTC and FNFs based on UV-Vis spectra and particle size analysis.Ultimately, we improved LLIP method by mixing two kinds of C₆₀-pyridine solution with different complexion time. We named C₆₀-pyridine solution with 48 h complexion time after solution A, and named the other one after solution B. Combined with the result of optical microscope?OM? / scanning electron microscope?SEM? / transmission electron microscope?TEM?, we achieved our goals to obtain a kind of FNFs with long length-diameter ratio and 100% tube-like shape when solution A: solution B= 1:3?volume ratio?. This new kind of FNFs may have tremendous potential application in the area of super conductivity materials when doped with alkali metal.