A Quadruply Bridged Non-Offset Face-to-Face Porphyrin Dimer and Cross-Shaped Pentameric Porphyrin Tapes Based on 2,7,12,17-Tetrakis(pinacolatoboryl) NiII Porphyrin

2,7,12,17-Tetrakis(pinacolatoboryl) Ni^II porphyrin 5 Ni was synthesized in 75 % yield by Ir-catalyzed borylation of porphine followed by Ni^II metalation and has been demonstrated to be a useful synthon, giving 2,7,12,17-tetraaryated Ni^II porphyrins 6 a-d, peripherally octaarylated Ni^II porphyrins 8 a-d, quadruply bridged face-to-face non-offset Ni^II -porphyrin dimer 12, and cross-shaped β-meso singly linked porphyrin pentamers and nonamers. Oxidation of cross-shaped β-meso singly linked porphyrin pentamers 14 Ni and 14 Zn gave fused pentameric tapes 15 Ni and 15 Zn. The structures of 12, 14 Zn, and 15 Ni have been revealed by X-ray diffraction analysis. Optical separation of 12 has been accomplished, showing a bisignate coupling pattern for exciton-coupled blue-shifted Soret band. Pentameric porphyrin tape 15 Zn exhibits a red-shifted absorption band at 1156 nm and seven reversible redox waves.

Investigation of a bacteriochlorin-containing pentad array for panchromatic light-harvesting and charge separation

A new pentad array designed to exhibit panchromatic absorption and charge separation has been synthesized and characterized. The array is composed of a triad panchromatic absorber (a bis(perylene-monoimide)-porphyrin) to which are appended an electron acceptor (perylene-diimide) and an electron donor/hole acceptor (bacteriochlorin) in a crossbar arrangement. The motivation for incorporation of the bacteriochlorin versus a free-base or zinc chlorin utilized in prior constructs was to facilitate hole transfer to this terminal unit and thereby achieve a higher yield of charge separation across the array. The intense S₀ → S₁ (Q_y) band of the bacteriochlorin also enhances absorption in the near-infrared spectral region. Due to synthetic constraints, a phenylethyne linker was used to join the bacteriochlorin to the core porphyrin of the panchromatic triad rather than the diphenylethyne linker employed for the prior chlorin-containing pentads. Static and time-resolved photophysical studies reveal enhanced excited-state quenching for the pentad in benzonitrile and dimethyl sulfoxide compared to the prior chlorin-containing analogues. Success was only partial, however, as a long-lived charge separated state was not observed despite the improved energetics for the final ground-state hole/electron-shift reaction. The apparent reason is more facile competing charge-recombination due to the shorter bacteriochlorin - porphyrin linker that increases electronic coupling for this process. The studies highlight design criteria for balancing panchromatic absorption and long-lived charge separation in molecular architectures for solar-energy conversion.

Bending a photonic wire into a ring

Natural light-harvesting systems absorb sunlight and transfer its energy to the reaction centre, where it is used for photosynthesis. Synthetic chromophore arrays provide useful models for understanding energy migration in these systems. Research has focused on mimicking rings of chlorophyll molecules found in purple bacteria, known as 'light-harvesting system 2'. Linear meso-meso linked porphyrin chains mediate rapid energy migration, but until now it has not been possible to bend them into rings. Here we show that oligo-pyridyl templates can be used to bend these rod-like photonic wires to create covalent nanorings that consist of 24 porphyrin units and a single butadiyne link. Their elliptical conformations have been probed by scanning tunnelling microscopy. This system exhibits two excited state energy transfer processes: one from a bound template to the peripheral porphyrins and one, in the template-free ring, from the exciton-coupled porphyrin array to the π-conjugated butadiyne-linked porphyrin dimer segment.

Pd-Catalyzed Cross Coupling Strategy for Functional Porphyrin Arrays

Porphyrin arrays are an important class of compounds to study interporphyrin electronic interactions that are crucial in determining the rates of energy transfer and electron transfer reactions. When the electronic interactions become stronger, porphyrin arrays exhibit significantly altered optical and electronic properties owing to large oscillator strength and flexible electronic nature of porphyrins. In addition, porphyrins accept various metal cation in their cavities and the interporphyrin interactions depend upon the coordinated metal. With these in the background, porphyrin arrays have been extensively explored as sensors, multielectron catalysts, photodynamic therapy reagents, artificial photosynthetic antenna, nonlinear optical materials, and so on. Here, we review the synthesis of porphyrin arrays by palladium-catalyzed cross-coupling reactions, which are quite effective to construct carbon-carbon bonds and carbon-nitrogen bonds in porphyrin substrates. Palladium-catalyzed cross coupling reactions employed so far are Suzuki-Miyaura coupling reaction, Sonogashira coupling reaction, Buchwald-Hartwig amination, Mizoroki-Heck reaction, Migita-Kosugi-Stille coupling reaction, and so on. In each case, the representative examples and synthetic advantages are discussed.

Synthesis and electronic properties of carbazole-based core-modified diporphyrins showing near infrared absorption

Directly linked carbazole-based core-modified diporphyrin D2 and fused diporphyrin F2 were synthesized. These diporphyrins showed significant electronic interactions and conjugation allowing for redshifted near infrared (NIR) absorption and small HOMO-LUMO gaps as confirmed by NIR absorption spectroscopy, cyclic voltammetry (CV) measurements, and DFT calculations.

Benzene- and pyridine-incorporated octaphyrins with different coordination modes toward two PdII centers

Expanded porphyrins have received considerable attention due to their unique optical, electrochemical and coordination properties. Here, we report benzene- and pyridine-incorporated octaphyrins(1.1.0.0.1.1.0.0), which are synthesized through Suzuki-Miyaura coupling of α,α'-diboryltripyrrane with m-dibromobenzene and 2,6-dibromopyridine, respectively, and subsequent oxidation with 2,3-dicyano-5,6-dichlorobenzoquinone. Both octaphyrins are nonaromatic and take on dumbbell structures. Upon treatment with Pd(OOCCH₃)₂, the benzene-incorporated one gives a C_i symmetric NNNC coordinated bis-Pd^II complex but the pyridine incorporated one gives C_i and C_s symmetric NNNC coordinated bis-Pd^II complexes along with an NNNN coordinated bis-Pd^II complex bearing a transannular C-C bond between the pyrrole α-positions. In addition, these two pyridine-containing NNNC Pd^II complexes undergo trifluoroacetic acid-induced clean interconversion.

Tetrameric and Hexameric Porphyrin Nanorings: Template Synthesis and Photophysical Properties

Hexameric and tetrameric porphyrin nanorings, Z6·T6 and Z4·T4, were synthesized in 53% and 14% yields, respectively, by the Sonogashira-type self-oligomerization of porphyrin monomer 1 using hexadentate template T6 and tetrapyridylporphyrin template T4. Template-free nanorings Z6 and Z4 were also prepared. The femtosecond transient absorption measurements revealed fast excitation energy hopping (EEH) along these nanorings with hopping rates of 2-5 ps. Treatment of Z6 with chiral template CT6 gave Z6·CT6 showing circular dichroism (CD) and circularly polarized luminescence (CPL) in the absorption and fluorescence regions of Z6, respectively, which indicates chirality transfer from CT6 to Z6.

Photocatalytic redox reactions with metalloporphyrins

Metalloporphyrinoids are utilized as efficient sensitizers and catalysts in photosynthesis and the reverse reaction that is respiration. Because metalloporphyrinoids show strong absorption in the visible region and redox active, metalloporphyrinoids are also suited as photoredox catalysts for photo-driven redox reactions using solar energy. In particular, metalloporphyrins are utilized as pivotal components to mimic the structure and function of the photosynthetic reaction center. Metalloporphyrins are used as photoredox catalysts for hydrogen evolution from electron and proton sources combining hydrogen evolution catalysts. Metalloporphyrins also act as thermal redox catalysts for photocatalytic reduction of CO2 with photoredox catalysts. Metalloporphyrins are also used as dual catalysts for a photoredox catalyst for oxygenation of substrates with H2O and a redox catalyst for O2 reduction when dioxygen is used as a two-electron oxidant and H2O as an oxygen source, both of which are the greenest reactants. Free base porphyrins can also be employed as promising photoredox catalysts for C–C bond formation reactions.

A Convenient Synthesis of Pentaporphyrins and Supramolecular Complexes with a Fulleropyrrolidine

A simple and straightforward synthesis of diporphyrins and pentaporphyrins is reported here. The supramolecular interactions of the new porphyrin derivatives with C60 and PyC60 (a pyridyl [60]fulleropyrrolidine) were evaluated by absorption and fluorescence titrations in toluene. While no measurable modifications of the absorption and fluorescence spectra were observed upon addition of C60 to the porphyrin derivatives, the addition of PyC60 to the corresponding mono-Zn(II) porphyrins resulted in the formation of Zn(porphyrin)-PyC60 coordination complexes and the binding constants were calculated. Results show that the four free-base porphyrin units in pentaporphyrin 6 have a significant contribution in the stabilization of the 6-PyC60 complex. The crystal and molecular features of the pentaporphyrin Zn5 were unveiled using single-crystal X-ray diffraction studies.

Synthesis and Suzuki-Miyaura cross coupling reactions for post-synthetic modification of a tetrabromo-anthracenyl porphyrin

The outstanding properties of porphyrins and the extreme versatility of their synthesis and their functionalisation constitute real assets for the fabrication of opto- and electroactive materials or for biological applications. In the large collection of porphyrinic structures, meso-substituted anthracenylporphyrins are among the less studied. Here, we synthesised the 5,10,15,20-tetra-bromoanthracenylporphyrin (BrTAP) and we investigated its chemical reactivity by post-synthetic modification using Suzuki-Miyaura cross coupling reactions with a series of boronic acids to generate a collection of original tetra-anthracenyl porphyrin based molecules: tetraphenylanthracenylporphyrin (TPAP), tetratolylanthracenylporphyrin (TTAP), tetramethoxyphenylanthracenylporphyrin (TMPAP), tetranaphthylanthracenylporphyrin (TNAP) and tetrapyrenylanthracenylporphyrin (TPyAP). Optical characterisations of these modified porphyrins showed, in most cases, only emission of the porphyrin in the visible region with extinction of the fluorescence of PAHs in the UV or visible region.

Synthesis of a porphyrin-hexaarylbenzene-hexabenzocoronene triad

The synthesis of a triad consisting of porphyrin and hexabenzocoronene (HBC) units, which are connected via a central hexaarylbenzene (HAB) core, is presented. The ortho substitution pattern at the core results in a close proximity of the two chromophores, which influences their properties such as the intensity ratio of UV-vis absorption bands.

Increasing the lifetimes of charge separated states in porphyrin-fullerene polyads

Two linear polyads were designed using zinc(ii)porphyrin, [ZnP], and N-methyl-2-phenyl-3,4-fullero-pyrrolidine (C₆₀) where C₆₀ is dangling either at the terminal position of [ZnP]-C₆H₄-[triple bond, length as m-dash]-C₆H₄-[ZnP]-C₆₀ (1) or at the central position of [ZnP]-C₆H₄-[triple bond, length as m-dash]-C₆H₄-[ZnP(C₆₀)]-C₆H₄-[triple bond, length as m-dash]-C₆H₄-[ZnP] (2) in order to test whether the fact of having one or two side electron donors influences the rate of electron transfer, k_et. These polyads were studied using cyclic voltammograms, DFT computations, steady state and time-resolved fluorescence spectroscopy, and femtosecond transient absorption spectroscopy (fs-TAS). Photo-induced electron transfer confirmed by the detection of the charge separated state [ZnP˙+]/C₆₀˙^- from fs-TAS occurs with rates (k_et) of 3-4 × 10¹⁰ s^-1 whereas the charge recombinations (CRs) are found to produce the [ZnP] ground state via two pathways (central [ZnP˙+]/C₆₀˙^- (ps) and terminal central [ZnP˙+]/C₆₀˙^- (ns) producing [1ZnP] (ground state) and [3ZnP*]). The formation of the T₁ species is more predominant for 2.

Evolution of Nanoflowers and Nanospheres of Zinc Bisporphyrinate Tweezers at the Air/Water Interface

Although the sophisticated Langmuir and Langmuir-Blodgett (LB) techniques facilitate the fabrication of uniform ultrathin monolayer and films, they are also revealed as powerful tools for the bottom-up construction of the nanostructures through the air/water interface. In this paper, unique nanoflowers or nanospheres were constructed based on the synthesized m-phthalic diamide-linked zinc bisporphyrinate tweezers using the Langmuir and LB techniques. It was found that the two tweezer-type zinc bisporphyrinates could form stable two-dimensional spreading films at the air/water interface, which could be subsequently transferred onto solid substrates using the vertical lifting method. Atomic force microscopy (AFM) revealed that at the initial spreading stage, the compound formed flat disklike domains and then hierarchically evolved into nanoflowers or nanospheres upon compressing the floating film. Such nanostructures have not been reported before and cannot be fabricated using the other self-assembly methods.

Solid surface vs. liquid surface: nanoarchitectonics, molecular machines, and DNA origami

Comparisons of science and technology between these solid and liquid surfaces would be a good navigation for current-to-future developments.