Crystal engineering of nanoporous architectures and chiral porphyrin assemblies

Abstract

The observations described in this paper address the scientific challenge of predictably self-organizing porphyrin molecules into materials with complex topologies, with an emphasis on rational construction of robust nanoporous solids and systems exhibiting supramolecular chirality. In order to achieve these goals the porphyrin scaffold is deliberately functionalized with different molecular recognition groups prone to engaging in robust supramolecular synthons. The results demonstrate that, while an a priori rigorous prediction of crystal structures is still not possible, the designed patterning of porphyrin-based network and framework architectures via cooperative non-covalent linkers is an achievable task. This lays a solid ground for the successful design, synthesis and characterization of novel functional supramolecular materials that will exhibit unique properties in the areas of sieving, sensing, gas storage, photonics and nonlinear optics, which are unobtainable by the discrete molecular entities.