Solution and solid state structure of a canted, side-to-face, bis(porphyrin) adduct

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 H-1 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) Angstrom, b = 29.972(1) Angstrom, c = 19.084(1) Angstrom, 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.