Highly Crystalline Mesoporous C60 with Ordered Pores: A Class of Nanomaterials for Energy Applications

Highly ordered mesoporous C60 with well-ordered porous structure and a high crystallinity is prepared through the nanohard templating method using saturated solution of C60 in 1-chloronaphthalene (51 mg mL-1) as a C60 precursor and SBA-15 as a hard template. The high solubility of C60 in 1-chloronaphthalene helps not only to encapsulate a huge amount of the C60 into the mesopores of the template but also supports the oligomerization of C60 and the formation of crystalline walls made of C60. The obtained mesoporous C60 exhibits a rod shaped morphology, a high specific surface area (680 m2 g-1), tuneable pores, and a highly crystalline wall structure. This exciting ordered mesoporous C60 offers high supercapacitive performance and a high selectivity to H2O2 production and methanol tolerance for ORR. We expect that this simple strategy could be adopted to make a series of mesoporous fullerenes with different structures and carbon atoms as a new class of energy materials.