title: Solution and Solid State Structure of a Canted, Side-to-Face, Bis(porphyrin) Adduct.
abstract: The coordination chemistry of meso-pyridyl/phenyl porphyrins (PyPs) toward metallo-porphyrins with substitutionally labile axial ligands has been exploited for the self-assembling of ordered arrays of pigments. PyPs are particularly versatile bulding blocks: the peripheral N atom can be either in the 4'-position (4'PyPs) or in the 3'-position (3'PyPs), and they can provide connections to as many as four metal centers by coordination of the pyridyl groups. While 4'PyPs lead to arrays of perpendicularly linked, side-to-face, porphyrins, 3'PyPs yield the corresponding canted analogues. Even though several perpendicular arrays have been described, the examples of canted adducts are few and all very recent. We report here a detailed X-ray structure of the new adduct of two axially ligated canted porphyrins [Ru(TPP)(CO)(3'MPyP)] (1) (TPP = tetraphenylporphyrin, 3'MPyP = 5-(3'-pyridyl)-10,15,20-triphenylporphyrin) as well as its thorough spectroscopic characterization in solution, including the dynamic (1)H NMR investigation of the NH tautomeric exchange process. 1 crystallizes in the monoclinic space group P2(1)/a, Z = 4, with a = 13.508(1) Å, b = 29.972(1) Å, c = 19.084(1) Å, and beta = 96.03(1) degrees. The structural and spectroscopic data of 1 assume a strategic importance among axially ligated pyridylporphyrin systems, since they can be fruitfully compared to those of perpendicular analogues. The importance of a comparative investigation of the canted and perpendicular arrays of porphyrins is readily understood: it might help understanding how relevant physicochemical properties, such as photoinduced long-range electron or energy transfer processes, depend on the mutual orientation of the pigments in the 3-dimensional architecture while the other parameters in the supramolecular array (number of macrocycles, distance between them) are maintained substantially unchanged.
authors.affiliation: Dipartimento di Scienze Chimiche, Università di Trieste, 34127 Trieste, Italy, and Sincrotrone Trieste SpA, Trieste, Italy.
authors.forename: Enzo
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Alessio
authors.forename: Silvano
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Geremia
authors.forename: Stefano
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Mestroni
authors.forename: Elisabetta
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Iengo
authors.forename: Ivana
authors.initials: I
authors.lastname: Srnova
authors.forename: Miroslav
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Slouf