title: Interactions and chemical transformations of coronene inside and outside carbon nanotubes.
abstract: By exposing flat and curved carbon surfaces to coronene, a variety of van der Waals hybrid heterostructures are prepared, including coronene encapsulated in carbon nanotubes, and coronene and dicoronylene adsorbed on nanotubes or graphite via π-π interactions. The structure of the final product is determined by the temperature of the experiment and the curvature of the carbon surface. While at temperatures below and close to the sublimation point of coronene, nanotubes with suitable diameters are filled with single coronene molecules, at higher temperatures additional dimerization and oligomerization of coronene occurs on the surface of carbon nanotubes. The fact that dicoronylene and possible higher oligomers are formed at lower temperatures than expected for vapor-phase polymerization indicates the active role of the carbon surface used primarily as template. Removal of adsorbed species from the nanotube surface is of utmost importance for reliable characterization of encapsulated molecules: it is demonstrated that the green fluorescence attributed previously to encapsulated coronene is instead caused by dicoronylene adsorbed on the surface which can be solubilized and removed using surfactants. After removing most of the adsorbed layer, a combination of Raman spectroscopy and transmission electron microscopy was employed to follow the transformation dynamics of coronene molecules inside nanotubes.
authors.affiliation: Walther-Meissner-Institute, Bavarian Academy of Sciences and Humanities, Walther-Meissner-Strasse 8, 85748, Garching, Germany.
authors.forename: Bea
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Botka
authors.forename: Melinda E
authors.initials: ME
authors.lastname: Füstös
authors.forename: Hajnalka M
authors.initials: HM
authors.lastname: Tóháti
authors.forename: Katalin
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Németh
authors.forename: Gyöngyi
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Klupp
authors.forename: Zsolt
authors.initials: Z
authors.lastname: Szekrényes
authors.forename: Dorina
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Kocsis
authors.forename: Margita
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Utczás
authors.forename: Edit
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Székely
authors.forename: Tamás
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Váczi
authors.forename: György
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Tarczay
authors.forename: Rudi
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Hackl
authors.forename: Thomas W
authors.initials: TW
authors.lastname: Chamberlain
authors.forename: Andrei N
authors.initials: AN
authors.lastname: Khlobystov
authors.forename: Katalin
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Kamarás
keywords: carbon nanotubes; coronene; encapsulation; graphene nanoribbons