Preparation and characterization of free-standing pure porphyrin nanoparticles

Abstract

Preparation and characterization of absolutely pure and stable nanoparticles of 5,10,15,20-meso-tetrakis phenyl porphyrin (TPP) and catalytically repute 5,10,15,20-meso-tetrakis pentaflurophenyl porphyrin (H2F20TPP) by improved ‘reprecipitation method’ is described. The innovation of this modified ‘reprecipitation method’ lies on the judicial selection of organic solvent and amount of porphyrin solution to be injected in the aqueous media. Exactly similar process produces relatively small nanoparticles for TPP than that of H2F20TPP while the stability of the H2F20TPP nanoparticles is bit higher than nanoparticles of TPP. Absorption and emission spectra reveal that the formation of nanoparticles for both the cases is induced by J-and H-type aggregation. DFT calculations predict the optimized geometries and frontier molecular orbital, which favours the strength of face-to-face interaction with neighbour molecules to be more facile for TPP than that of H2F20TPP helping the latter to form bigger and relatively more stable and free-standing nanoparticles. The use of no other compounds except dichloromethane, a highly volatile organic solvent and respective porphyrins give absolutely pure nanoparticles. This improved method will lead to produce organic nanoparticles of π-conjugated systems easily and efficiently.