letter to the editor
Mechanisms of Fullerene Separations I
greatly enjoyed the A-page article entitled “Chromatographic Separation of Fullerenes” by Saito, Ohta, and Jinno (Anal. Chem. 2004, 76, 266 A–272 A). I worked with them on many of the cited papers, as well numerous other papers dealing with polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs). However, I must clarify one impression left by the paper. The mechanism of fullerene and PAH separation on long-chain alkyl bonded phases is not known to a degree that explains the observed separations. For isomers of fullerenes or large PAHs, the molecular dimensions are on the order of 1–2 nm. The differences among the isomers in length, breadth, or depth are often
