Inorganic Chemistry, Vol.51, No.21, 11226-11228, 2012
Skeletal Transformation of Isolated Pentagon Rule (IPR) Fullerene C-82 into Non-IPR C82Cl28 with Notably Low Activation Barriers
A novel case of chlorination-promoted skeletal transformation in higher fullerenes is reported. Chlorination of C-82 [isolated pentagon rule (IPR) isomer no. 3] with SbCl5 results in two consecutive Stone-Wales rearrangements into non-IPR C82Cl28 with one pair of fused pentagons. An extensive theoretical study of the transformation pathways in C-82 revealed that the thermodynamically favorable rearrangement into non-IPR C82Cl28 needs a comparatively low activation energy.