Syntheses and photochemical properties of octasubstituted phthalocyaninato zinc complexes

In this work a selection of octasubstituted phthalocyaninato zinc complexes were synthesized and their photochemistry studied. The substituents included cholesterol (3a), estrone (3b), naphthol (3c) and phenoxy groups substituted with CH3 (3d), C(CH3)(3) (at two positions, 3e), C(CH3)(3) (3f), NO2 (3g), NH2 (3h), COH (3i). COOH (3j), and H (3k). In general, complexes containing electron-donating groups attached to the phenoxy ring (e.g. 3e and 3f) were found to be photochemically unstable with photobleaching quantum yields of the order of 10(-3). In the presence of electron-withdrawing groups (3g, 3i, and 3j) the photobleaching quantum yields were of the order of 10(-6) to 10(-5). Singlet oxygen quantum yields (Phi (Delta)) ranged from 0.01 to 0.73. The lowest Phi (Delta) was observed for the highly aggregated complex 3c. All the complexes showed aggregation at high concentrations. Electrochemical reduction using a thin-layer spectroelectrochemistry cell showed that the complexes become more monomeric following reduction. Copyright (C) 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.