Solubility of C60 and PCBM in Organic Solvents

The ability to correlate fullerene solubility with experimentally or computationally accessible parameters can significantly facilitate nanotechnology nowadays for a wide range of applications, while providing crucial insight into optimum design of future fullerene species. To date, there has been no single relationship that satisfactorily describes the existing data clearly manifesting the effects of solvent species, system temperature, and isomer. Using atomistic molecular dynamics simulations on two standard fullerene species, C60 and PCBM ([6,6]-phenyl-C61-butyric acid methyl ester), in a representative series of organic solvent media (i.e., chloroform, toluene, chlorobenzene, 1,3-dichlorobenzene, and 1,2-dichlorobenzene), we show that a single time constant characterizing the dynamic stability of a tiny (angstrom-sized) solvation shell encompassing the fullerene particle can be utilized to effectively capture the known trends of fullerene solubility as reported in the literature. The underlying physics differs substantially between the two fullerene species, however. Although C60 was previously shown to be dictated by a diffusion-limited aggregation mechanism, the side-chain-substituted PCBM is demonstrated herein to proceed with an analogous reaction-limited aggregation with the “reaction rate” set by the fullerene rotational diffusivity in the medium. The present results suggest that dynamic quantities—in contrast to the more often employed, static ones—may provide an excellent means to characterize the complex (entropic and enthalpic) interplay between fullerene species and the solvent medium, shed light on the factors determining the solvent quality of a nanoparticle solution, and, in particular, offer a practical pathway to foreseeing optimum fullerene design and fullerene–solvent interactions.