The Studies of Fullerenes and Metallofullerenes in Geometry, Electron Transfer, Chromatography and Characterization
| dc.contributor.author | Liu, Xiaoyang | en |
| dc.contributor.committeechair | Dorn, Harry C. | en |
| dc.contributor.committeemember | LaConte, Stephen M. | en |
| dc.contributor.committeemember | Valeyev, Eduard Faritovich | en |
| dc.contributor.committeemember | Lin, Feng | en |
| dc.contributor.committeemember | Gibson, Harry W. | en |
| dc.contributor.department | Chemistry | en |
| dc.date.accessioned | 2021-02-05T07:00:39Z | en |
| dc.date.available | 2021-02-05T07:00:39Z | en |
| dc.date.issued | 2019-08-14 | en |
| dc.description.abstract | Since their discovery, fullerenes and metallofullerenes have been investigated regarding their structures, synthesis, isolations, and applications. The highly symmetric structures of fullerenes and metallofullerenes lead to extraordinary physical properties, such as electron transfers, and attract major attention from the science community. It has been well established that the stabilities of fullerenes and metallofullerenes can be estimated by recognizing structural patterns. Recently, we developed a generalized spiral program and additional codes and believe they are useful for fullerene/metallofullerene researchers. The higher fullerenes, those with more than 90 carbon atoms, also follow certain structural patterns. In our studies, we have shown that the higher fullerenes with tubular structures are stable in thermodynamics and can survive the aminopropanol reaction, but other spherical fullerenes cannot. For the past three decades, great efforts have been devoted to applying fullerenes and metallofullerenes as electronic materials. In our studies, we find the ground state electron transfer properties endow metallofullerenes as an ideal material for perovskite solar cells to enhance the stabilities. It has been shown in our investigations that common metallofullerenes, such as Sc3N@C80, are capable to be as the electron transfer layers in perovskite solar cells, and the test demonstrates that our novel perovskite solar cells may achieve high stability and high efficiency. The electron transfer abilities of metallofullerenes are studied with the M2@C79N since electron densities located in between the two metal atoms convert between a single electron bond and a double electron bond. The huge spherical electron delocalized structures of fullerenes and metallofullerenes lead to strong interactions with other delocalized systems, such as graphene. Previous studies have shown that graphene has a unique ability in molecular adsorptions. However, the graphene surface is not always flat and the rippled areas have effects on the packing styles. Therefore, we examined the behavior of fullerenes on the rippled graphene surface and then compared with another flat molecule, PTCDA. The results show that the effect of rippled areas varies due to molecular structures. This study gives instructions for electronic device manufacturing using graphene and fullerenes. In our studies, polarizability is a key factor of fullerenes and metallofullerenes. It has been shown that the chromatographic retention behavior has a strong relationship with the average polarizability of a molecule. Based on the experimental data, we built a model for the prediction of chromatographic retention times using computational polarizabilities. After that, we validated the model by two series of chromatographic data. The characterization of carbon-based materials has been long investigated. In the last chapter, we introduce a dynamic nuclear polarization-based method to characterize the structures of chars and studied the adsorption of oxygen on the activated radical sites. Overall, the dissertation reports my Ph. D. studies in the areas including theoretical studies of fullerene geometries, chromatographic models, applications and also experimental studies of the applications of fullerenes/metallofullerenes and characterization. | en |
| dc.description.abstractgeneral | Fullerenes and metallofullerenes are important materials for engineering and science. In general, a fullerene cage contains only carbon atoms and has a closed spherical structure. Theoretically, for a given number of carbon atoms, there are thousands of different ways to assemble a fullerene structure, just like assembling Lego. However, just a limited number of fullerene molecules have been discovered. In the past four decades, several theories have been proposed to explain the fact. For example, an isolated pentagon rule shows that the fullerene structures should not have any conjugated pentagons, which will decrease the stabilities of fullerene molecules. In this dissertation, I would like to show our results, which demonstrate fullerenes that can be synthesized follow certain patterns. We apply experimental and theoretical methods to discover the patterns and explain the reason. The application of fullerenes/metallofullerenes is another hot topic. We consider the structures of fullerenes endow them extraordinary abilities of electron transfers. Therefore, we use metallofullerenes as electron transfer material in a solar cell, and we have a good solar cell with high efficiency. We also inspect the interactions between fullerenes and rippled graphene surface. The results are also extended to understand the chromatographic behavior of fullerenes. By considering the physical properties of fullerenes, we build up simple models to simulate the chromatographic retention behaviors of fullerene inside the chromatographic column. The characterization of carbon-based material is a big challenge and in this dissertation, we demonstrate our contributions of a novel method for characterization, which can detect activated carbons. | en |
| dc.description.degree | Doctor of Philosophy | en |
| dc.format.medium | ETD | en |
| dc.identifier.other | vt_gsexam:21773 | en |
| dc.identifier.uri | http://hdl.handle.net/10919/102264 | en |
| dc.publisher | Virginia Tech | en |
| dc.rights | In Copyright | en |
| dc.rights.uri | http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/ | en |
| dc.subject | fullerene | en |
| dc.subject | metallofullerene | en |
| dc.subject | geometry | en |
| dc.subject | perovskite solar cell | en |
| dc.subject | electron transfer | en |
| dc.subject | chromatography | en |
| dc.subject | dynamic nuclear polarization | en |
| dc.title | The Studies of Fullerenes and Metallofullerenes in Geometry, Electron Transfer, Chromatography and Characterization | en |
| dc.type | Dissertation | en |
| thesis.degree.discipline | Chemistry | en |
| thesis.degree.grantor | Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University | en |
| thesis.degree.level | doctoral | en |
| thesis.degree.name | Doctor of Philosophy | en |
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