Multi-responsive water soluble porphyrins

Jan Labuta

ICYS-Sengen Researcher

Porphyrins are widely studied functional dyes that play essential role in living organisms (photosynthetic antenna and reaction center, heme protein as an oxygen carrier, etc.). Previously, we have shown that porphyrins can also be used for enantiopurity detection, selective detection of anions, determination of trace water impurities in organic solvents or naked-eye discrimination of methanol from ethanol. However, most of these properties are achievable only in organic solvents (chloroform, dichloromethane, DMSO, etc.). Therefore, we have synthesized water soluble porphyrin derivatives, which exhibit response to various external stimuli such as temperature (phase separation), solvent composition (cononsolvency) and pH (colorimetric response). They also form several different supramolecular structures in aqueous media. This rich behavior in water will be introduced in the talk.