Communications Chemistry (Sep 2021)

Chemical shielding of H2O and HF encapsulated inside a C60 cage

  • Samuel P. Jarvis,
  • Hongqian Sang,
  • Filipe Junqueira,
  • Oliver Gordon,
  • Jo E. A. Hodgkinson,
  • Alex Saywell,
  • Philipp Rahe,
  • Salvatore Mamone,
  • Simon Taylor,
  • Adam Sweetman,
  • Jeremy Leaf,
  • David A. Duncan,
  • Tien-Lin Lee,
  • Pardeep K. Thakur,
  • Gabriella Hoffman,
  • Richard J. Whitby,
  • Malcolm H. Levitt,
  • Georg Held,
  • Lev Kantorovich,
  • Philip Moriarty,
  • Robert G. Jones

DOI
https://doi.org/10.1038/s42004-021-00569-0
Journal volume & issue
Vol. 4, no. 1
pp. 1 – 7

Abstract

Read online

The chemical nature of molecules encapsulated within fullerenes remain debated, with reports proposing a Faraday cage effect. Here, the authors show that H2O and HF molecules encapsulated inside a C60 cage experience a substantial intra-cage electrostatic interaction that results in off-center locations; despite this, the endofullerene’s frontier orbitals is unaffected, resulting in chemical shielding of the caged molecule.