Showing papers on "Dodecahedrane published in 2000"

Gas-phase production and photoelectron spectroscopy of the smallest fullerene, C20

Abstract: Fullerenes are graphitic cage structures incorporating exactly twelve pentagons. The smallest possible fullerene is thus C20, which consists solely of pentagons. But the extreme curvature and reactivity of this structure have led to doubts about its existence and stability. Although theoretical calculations have identified, besides this cage, a bowl and a monocyclic ring isomer as low-energy members of the C20 cluster family, only ring isomers of C20 have been observed so far. Here we show that the cage-structured fullerene C20 can be produced from its perhydrogenated form (dodecahedrane C20H20) by replacing the hydrogen atoms with relatively weakly bound bromine atoms, followed by gas-phase debromination. For comparison we have also produced the bowl isomer of C20 using the same procedure. We characterize the generated C20 clusters using mass-selective anion photoelectron spectroscopy; the observed electron affinities and vibrational structures of these two C20 isomers differ significantly from each other, as well as from those of the known monocyclic isomer. We expect that these unique C20 species will serve as a benchmark test for further theoretical studies.

Dodecahedryl Anion Formation and an Experimental Determination of the Acidity and C−H Bond Dissociation Energy of Dodecahedrane

Abstract: Dodecahedryl anion (1a) was generated in a Fourier transform mass spectrometer by deprotonation of dodecahedrane (1). Examination of the acid and base behavior of 1 and 1a, respectively, enabled the acidity of 1 to be determined (ΔH°acid = 402 ± 2 kcal/mol). Good agreement is found with the 298 K computed MP2/6-31+G(d)//HF/6-31+G(d) value of 405.1 kcal/mol. In a similar manner, the electron affinity of dodecahedryl radical was measured (EA = 4 ± 2 kcal/mol). These results were combined in a thermodynamic cycle to afford the C−H bond dissociation energy of dodecahedrane (BDE = 92 ± 3 kcal/mol), which is reasonably well reproduced (96.7 kcal/mol) at the MP2//HF level but leads to the suggestion that the reported heat of hydrogenation of dodecahedrene is in error. The DePuy kinetic method for measuring the acidity of 1 also was explored. It was found that this approach works well with triphenylsilyldodecahedrane but gives poor results with triethylsilyldodecahedrane. This latter failure is attributed to ster...