Absorption spectrometric study of molecular complex formation between [60]fullerene and a series of methylated pyridines.

[60]fullerene has been shown to form 1:1 molecular complexes with pyridine and some methylated pyridines such as 2-picoline, 3-picoline, 4-picoline, 2,6-lutidine and 2,4,6-collidine in CCl4 medium by absorption spectrometric method. Well defined charge transfer (CT) bands have been observed for complexes of C60 with all the pyridines studied except 4-picoline. From an analysis of the trends in the CT absorption bands the ionisation potentials of the methylpyridines have been determined. The electron affinity of C60 has also been determined from the spectral data. The formation constants of the complexes exhibit a very good linear free energy relationship from which the Hammett p parameter for the complexation process is found to be -2.96.