Abstract:

Retro-cycloaddition reaction is one of the most important reactions of fullerene derivatives. Many kinds of organofullerenes are not stable under reductive, oxidative or thermal conditions, where the functional addends are removed from the fullerene sphere and lead to the formation of pristine fullerenes. Such addition-retro-addition reaction has shown promising application in the protection/deprotection strategy for the purification and functionalization of fullerenes. However, the retro-addition reactions may cause problems for the applications of organofullerenes due to the instability of the compounds. Recently the electrochemical stabilities of a series of fullerooxazoles have been studied. The results show that there is intramolecular C-H…X (X = N，O) hydrogen bonding among the addends for one of the compounds, which attributes to the stability of the compound. Herein, the progress of the retro-cycloaddition reaction of organofullerenes and the factors that may affect the stability of organofullerenes is reviewed.

Key words: fullerene derivatives,retro-cycloaddition reactions,C--H...X hydrogen bonding