Fabrication of structure-preserving monodisperse particles of PMMA-grafted fullerenes

Fullerene has fascinated characteristics and the fabrication of fullerene-containing assembly of high solubility in general solvents at facile way is immensely expected for the material processing. We aimed to control supramolecular structure of fullerene-containing molecules with arrested morphology, which would boost material potentials to wider application. In this study, we have synthesized poly(methyl methacrylate) (PMMA)-grafted fullerene and the association behavior of PMMA-grafted fullerene in solvent is utilized to obtain monodisperse assemblies with submicron size. Furthermore, we have succeeded to fix the assembly morphology by UV irradiation and recovered the assembly in another solvent in which the assembly basically does not form. This procedure enables us to obtain fullerene- dispersed materials at sub- μ m order with various matrixes.