Microwave-assisted extraction of C60 and C70 from fullerene soot

Microwave-assisted extraction (MAE) was examined as an alternative to the traditional Soxhlet method of extracting C₆₀ and C₇₀ from fullerene soot. MAE of 0.20 g of fullerene soot with 95:5 toluene–acetonitrile yielded greater than 7.8 mg of C₆₀ and greater than 0.54 mg of C₇₀ in 4 min with no further increase in yield after 30 min of irradiation. By comparison, exhaustive Soxhlet extraction of the same size sample with the same solvent yielded 7.1 mg of C₆₀ and 0.58 mg of C₇₀ in 340 min. Reextraction by MAE of soot initially extracted by Soxhlet increased the yield of Soxhlet alone. Although MAE was limited to less than 0.5-g sample per extraction vessel, multiple samples were extracted with minimal increased extraction time and no reduction in the amount of material recovered.