Abstract
The glow discharge at low pressure, under nitrogen atmosphere, is an easy method to synthesize nitrogen encapsulated fullerenes. We present here the results concerning our attempts to optimize the synthesis conditions by this method as well as basic characterization of the obtained products, namely N@C60 and N@C70 together with the molecular counterparts N2@C60 and N2@C70. Changes in pressure, voltage discharge and temperature indicated the optimum yield for N@C60 in our case, which was about 0.0025%, was obtained at 650°C, 1 Torr, 850 V and 1 to 2 mA discharge. In this paper we discuss the HPLC separation of these products and the behavior of N2 in the C60 cage.
Acknowledgments
We thank A. Weidinger and W. Harneit of Hahn‐Meitner Institute in Berlin for their help concerning this work.