Supramolecular Fullerene-Porphyrin Chemistry
A R T I C L E S
Reports soon appeared of cocrystallates of fullerenes with
octaethylporphyrin (H2OEP) and metallooctaethylporphyrins,18
and with tetraphenylporphyrins8 (H2TPP). More examples
followed,19-25 and fullerenes are attracted to other flat π
surfaces.13,26-28 The curved to flat π-π attraction has been
analyzed by molecular mechanics modeling and shown to be
largely the result of van der Waals dispersion forces.8 Further,
the interaction is not merely a feature of solid-state cocrystal-
lizations; it persists in solution.8 This has been shown elegantly
with covalently linked bis-porphyrin hosts that take up fullerene
guests having binding constants up to 7 × 105 M-1 in
toluene.29-31 These values can exceed those of traditional
concave hosts such as calixarenes,32 cyclotriveratralenes,33,34 and
resorcarenes,35 showing that the matching of convex and
concave surfaces is not a requirement for strong supramolecular
π-π complexation.
Second, it was proposed that the fullerene-porphyrin π-π
interaction involved some degree of electrostatic attraction or
charge transfer.17 In particular, it was proposed that the electron-
rich “double bond” at the 6:6 ring juncture of C60 or C70 was
attracted to the protic center of the free-base porphyrin. This
proposal was counter to the prevailing notion of fullerenes acting
as electron acceptors. Indeed, the electron-accepting ability of
fullerenes is probably their most characteristic chemical prop-
erty.36 This is illustrated in metalloporphyrin chemistry by the
reaction of CrII(TPP) with C60 in tetrahydrofuran to give the
Cr(III) fulleride salt [Cr(THF)2(TPP)][C60]37 or the reaction of
SnII(TPP) with C60 in the presence of N-methylimidazole to give
[SnIV(N-MeIm)2(TPP)][C60]2.37 However, because of the de-
localized nature of the C60 LUMO, fullerene electronegativity
is fundamentally a global property, whereas the proposed
fullerene/porphyrin interaction is a more local one. One approach
to address the charge transfer question is to study metalated
porphyrin hosts and determine how the fullerene responds as a
function of metal. The roles of hard, first row transition metals
in metalloporphyrins can be expected to be quite different from
soft metals in phosphine complexes such as Ni(C60)(PEt3)2
or IrCl(C60)(CO)(PPh3)239 because hard metals have little or no
opportunity to engage in π back-bonding.
38
We have reported that the complex of Fe(TPP)+ with C60 is
green rather than purple, the expected color of the combined
unperturbed chromophores.19 This implies charge transfer via
coordinate bonding. The Fe atom is slightly out-of-plane toward
the C60 indicating the presence of a weak axial coordinate bond
with at least some degree of covalence. The orbitals involved
were identified by density functional theory in closely related
complexes of Fe(TPP)+ with η2-bonded arenes.19 Because the
Fe(III) center is cationic and its dz2 orbital is only half occupied,
it would be difficult to argue that the direction of charge transfer
is not with the fullerene as the donor. On the other hand, many
fullerene-M(OEP) structures have been interpreted as indicating
no covalent interaction,18 and some structures apparently have
the less electron-rich 5:6 (rather than a 6:6) ring-juncture bond
closest to the metalloporphyrin.20,22 Another recent study
concludes that these molecular complexes have no charge
transfer in the ground state.23 Evidence that C60 has sufficient
ligand field strength to cause a high to low spin-state change in
Mn(TPP) has also been forwarded,23 but this contradicts field
strength deductions based on other Mn(TPP) chemistry40 and
isoelectronic Fe(III) chemistry.19 A recent communication
reports that binding constants for C60 increase as a function of
the metal in a bis-porphyrin host in the order Ag(I) < Ni(II) <
Cu(II) < Zn(II) < free base < Co(II) < Rh(III).41 With the
exception of rhodium(III), the differences are quite small, and
the ordering has not been interpreted. The ordering changes
slightly with C70.41 Synthesizing a coherent understanding of
these sometimes conflicting observations is the goal of this
paper. We address the problem by studying the complexation
of C60 and C70 guests in metalated “jaws porphyrin” hosts.
(18) Olmstead, M. M.; Costa, D. A.; Maitra, K.; Noll, B. C.; Phillips, S. L.;
Van Calcar, P. M.; Balch, A. L. J. Am. Chem. Soc. 1999, 121, 7090-
7097.
(19) Evans, D. R.; Fackler, N. L. P.; Xie, Z.; Rickard, C. E. F.; Boyd, P. D. W.;
Reed, C. A. J. Am. Chem. Soc. 1999, 121, 8466-8474.
(20) Ishii, T.; Aizawa, N.; Yamashita, M.; Matsuzaka, H.; Kodama, T.; Kikuchi,
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90.
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N. V.; Shul’ga, Y. M.; Tarasov, B. P.; Gumanov, K. L.; Batsanov, A. S.;
Howard, J. A. K.; Lyubovskaya, R. N. Chem.-Eur. J. 2001, 7, 2605-2616.
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Results and Discussion
Design and Synthesis of Jaws Porphyrin. The design of
“jaws” porphyrins evolved from an interplay of molecular
modeling and experiment. The basic bis-porphyrin motif was
cut from the common zigzag structural arrangement seen in self-
assembling tetraphenylporphyrin/fullerene cocrystallates.8 Vari-
ous linkers such as those illustrated in Figure 1 were used to
construct bis-porphyrins as fullerene binding hosts maintaining
this motif. The design criteria, based on cocrystallate structures,
allowed for a porphyrin-porphyrin intercenter distance of 11.5-
12 Å with interplanar porphyrin angles of 40-60°. Host-guest
complexes with C60 were constructed and subjected to geometry
optimization with molecular mechanics calculations. In each
case, the gas-phase binding enthalpy was determined together
with the geometry of the free bis-porphyrin host. It became clear
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