Squeezing formaldehyde into C60 fullerene

Abstract

The cavity inside fullerene C₆₀ provides a highly symmetric and inert environment for housing atoms and small molecules. Here we report the encapsulation of formaldehyde inside C₆₀ by molecular surgery, yielding the supermolecular complex CH₂O@C₆₀, despite the 4.4 Å van der Waals length of CH₂O exceeding the 3.7 Å internal diameter of C₆₀. The presence of CH₂O significantly reduces the cage HOMO-LUMO gap. Nuclear spin-spin couplings are observed between the fullerene host and the formaldehyde guest. The rapid spin-lattice relaxation of the formaldehyde ¹³C nuclei is attributed to a dominant spin-rotation mechanism. Despite being squeezed so tightly, the encapsulated formaldehyde molecules rotate freely about their long axes even at cryogenic temperatures, allowing observation of the ortho-to-para spin isomer conversion by infrared spectroscopy. The particle in a box nature of the system is demonstrated by the observation of two quantised translational modes in the cryogenic THz spectra.