期刊名称：Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
印刷版ISSN：0027-8424
电子版ISSN：1091-6490
出版年度：2014
卷号：111
期号：23
页码：8374-8379
DOI：10.1073/pnas.1406518111
语种：English
出版社：The National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America
摘要：A supramolecular combination of carbon nanotube and fullerene, so-called a peapod, has attracted much interest, not solely because of its physical properties but also for its unique assembled structures of carbonaceous entities. However, the detailed structural information available was not sufficient for in-depth understanding of its structural chemistry or for exploratory research inspired by novel physical phenomena, mainly because of the severely inhomogeneous nature of currently available carbon nanotubes. We herein report solid-state structures of a molecular peapod. This structure, solved with a belt-persistent finite carbon nanotube molecule at the atomic level by synchrotron X-ray diffraction, revealed the presence of a smooth, inflection-free Hirshfeld surface inside the tube, and the smoothness permitted dynamic motion of the C60 guest molecule even in the solid state. This precise structural information may inspire the molecular design of carbonaceous machines assembled purely through van der Waals contacts between two neutral molecules.
