Properties
H2@C60 is found to be a stable molecule. it survives 10 minutes at 500 °C and shows the same chemical reactivity as empty C60. The electronic properties are also largely unaffected.
The process of hydrogen introduction and release can be facilitated by increasing the size of the orifice. This can be done by replacing sulfur by selenium (sodium thiolate, Se8) exploiting larger C-Se bond length. Filling cracked-open fullerene now takes 8 hours at 190 °C at 760 atmospheres (77 MPa) of hydrogen and release between 150 °C and 180 °C is three times as fast compared to the sulfur analogue. The activation energy for release is lowered by 0.7 kcal/mol to 28.2 kcal/mol (2.9 to 118 kJ/mol).
There is evidence that hydrogen in the fullerene cage is not completely shielded from the outside world as one study found that H2@C60 is more efficient at quenching singlet oxygen than empty C60.
Read more about this topic: Endohedral Hydrogen Fullerene
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—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
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—John Locke (1632–1704)