Straightforward Self-Assembly of Porphyrin Nanowires in Water: Harnessing Adamantane/β-Cyclodextrin Interactions

Abstract

A convenient approach for the self-assembly of well-defined porphyrin nanowires in water, wherein the individual monomers do not aggregate via pi-pi interactions, is disclosed. These unidirectional and heteromeric assemblies are instead composed of robust beta-CD/adamantane host/guest interactions. A combination of surface microscopies and fluorescence energy transfer experiments were conducted on the nanowires demonstrating their stability and resistance to disassembly.

A naphthalimide derived fluorescent sensor for solid-phase screening of cucurbit[7]uril–guest interactions

“…1–5 Further, host-guest interactions are increasingly used for the construction of functional assemblies, polymers, and nanoparticles, with stimuli responsive or self-healing properties. 6–11 Although a number of elegant macrocyclic hosts have been investigated, there is particular interest in the cucurbit[n]uril family of hosts (CB[n], n = 5, 6, 7, 8 & 10) for the design of functional supramolecular constructs due to their facile synthetic preparation and ability to bind selectively with guest molecules in water. 12–15 …”

Water-soluble porphyrin nanospheres: enhanced photo-physical properties achieved via cyclodextrin driven double self-inclusion

“…1 This interest is due to the attractive photo-physical properties of porphyrin assemblies leading to potential applications, inter alia , in solar energy harvesting, sensing, photoconductance, and catalysis. 2 Indeed, porphyrinic nanostructures of diverse architectures (including rings, 2 a ,3 rods, 3,4 wires, 5 tubes 6 , and sheets 7 ) have been explored. Particular attention has focused on the development of water compatible porphyrin nanospheres 8 (NSs) since such systems can be used as agents for biological imaging and photodynamic therapy (PDT).…”

Synthesis of porphyrinic polystyrenes and their self-assembly with pristine fullerene (C60)

“…To overcome this problem porphyrin molecules are mostly modified into their derivatives, which can effectively enhance their solubility. Recently, porphyrins have been used to construct the novel selfassembly morphologies using covalent/non-covalent interactions with combination of several species such as carbon nanotube (CNT), graphene, and fullerene [9][10][11][12][13]. Among them, the porphyrin-fullerene (C 60 ) complexes are being extensively studied because of their variety of potential applications such as sensors, electronics and organic solar-cells [14,15].…”

“…Recently, welldefined self-assembled morphologies, such as rod (1D), sheets (2D) and microspheres (3D) have been observed [22]. The selfassembly morphology is usually determined by individual units [10], thus assembly morphology formed by complexation between porphyrin and fullerene is dependent on the properties of porphyrin and fullerene especially their solubility. To enhance the solubility of porphyrin, it has been modified in numerous ways, however only few examples are for polymer modified porphyrins which can well complex with C 60 [23,24].…”