A little more than a year ago, a ChemRxiv pre-print appeared bearing the title referenced in this post,[cite]10.26434/chemrxiv.8009633.v1[/cite] which immediately piqued my curiosity. The report presented persuasive evidence, in the form of trapping experiments, that dicarbon or C 2 had been formed by the following chemical synthesis.
AbstractDiatomic carbon (C2) is historically an elusive chemical species. It has long been believed that the generation of C2 requires extremely high physical energy, such as an electric carbon arc or multiple photon excitation, and so it has been the general consensus that the inherent nature of C2 in the ground state is experimentally inaccessible. Here, we present the chemical synthesis of C2 from a hypervalent alkynyl-λ3-iodane in a flask at room temperature or below, providing experimental evidence to support theoretical predictions that C2 has a singlet biradical character with a quadruple bond, thus settling a long-standing controversy between experimental and theoretical chemists, and that C2 serves as a molecular element in the bottom-up chemical synthesis of nanocarbons such as graphite, carbon nanotubes, and C60.
Diatomic carbon (C2) is historically an elusive chemical species. It has long been believed that the generation of C2 requires extremely high “physical” energy, such as an electric carbon arc or multiple photon excitation, and so it has been the general consensus that the inherent nature of C2 in the ground state is experimentally inaccessible. Here, we present the first “chemical” synthesis of C2 in a flask at room temperature or below, providing the first experimental evidence to support theoretical predictions that (1) C2 has a singlet biradical character with a quadruple bond, thus settling a long-standing controversy between experimental and theoretical chemists, and that (2) C2 serves as a molecular element in the formation of sp2-carbon allotropes such as graphite, carbon nanotubes and C60.