Organic Chemistry Laboratory, Nagoya University

Our laboratory has succeeded in synthesizing the world’s first Möbius carbon nanobelt, a Möbius ring of carbon. Methods to synthesize nanocarbons, carbon materials with nanometer-sized repeating structures, with atomic-level precision are required in materials science. As an important step toward this goal, “molecular nanocarbon science,” which uses synthetic organic chemistry to synthesize the molecules that form the substructure of nanocarbons, has been actively studied in recent years. However, molecular nanocarbons synthesized so far have been geometrically simple structures such as rings or belts. In order to synthesize unexplored nanocarbons with complex geometric structures predicted by theoretical chemistry, it is necessary to develop new methods to synthesize molecular nanocarbons with more complex geometric features. In this study, we have succeeded in synthesizing “Möbius carbon nanobelts,” molecular nanocarbons with the shape of Möbius rings.

The synthesis of this Mobius carbon nanobelt made the Nature Synthesis paper COVER where the paper was published!

Cool molecule, cool design, please check out!