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Facile and scalable synthesis of a highly hydroxylated water-soluble fullerenol as a single nanoparticle

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Abstract

A water-soluble polyhydroxylated fullerene, i.e. a fullerenol, with 44 hydroxyl groups and 8 secondary bound water molecules, C60(OH)44·8H2O (estimated average structure), has been synthesized in a facile one step reaction from pristine C60 by hydroxylation with hydrogen peroxide in the presence of a phase-transfer catalyst, tetra-n-butylammonium hydroxide (TBAH), under organic/aqueous bilayer conditions. The fullerenol exhibited high water solubility, up to 64.9 mg/mL, under neutral (pH = 7) conditions. Dynamic light-scattering (DLS) analysis showed a narrow particle size distribution, of 1–2 nm, indicating that the fullerenol had high dispersion properties in water. The results of particle size analyses, which both focused on a single nanoregion and were conducted using a novel induced grating (IG) method and a scanning probe microscope (SPM), were consistent with the DLS results. A plausible reaction mechanism, which includes fullerene oxide intermediates detected by liquid chromatography-mass spectrometry (LC-MS), has been proposed.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Division of Applied Chemistry, Graduate School of Engineering, Osaka University, Suita, Osaka, 565-0871, Japan

    Ken Kokubo, Shogo Shirakawa, Naoki Kobayashi & Takumi Oshima

  2. Vitamin C60 BioResearch Corporation, 1-3-19 Yaesu, Chuo-ku, Tokyo, 103-0028, Japan

    Hisae Aoshima

Authors
  1. Ken Kokubo
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  2. Shogo Shirakawa
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  3. Naoki Kobayashi
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  4. Hisae Aoshima
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  5. Takumi Oshima
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Correspondence to Ken Kokubo.

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Kokubo, K., Shirakawa, S., Kobayashi, N. et al. Facile and scalable synthesis of a highly hydroxylated water-soluble fullerenol as a single nanoparticle. Nano Res. 4, 204–215 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12274-010-0071-z

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12274-010-0071-z

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