Self-assembly of a chiral porphyrin at surfaces

Evaporation of solutions of a new synthetic tetra meso-amidophenyl-substituted porphyrin derivative on graphite leads to different morphologies at the air–solid interface, whose nature depends on the solvent in which the molecule was dissolved. Fibres–which were shown to be a stable aggregate form of the compound by molecular modelling–are observed by AFM, although they do not seem to have the structure which was predicted. The reason for this situation appears to be the dominance of surface–molecule interactions over those between the molecules themselves. On mica surfaces, dewetting takes place, leading to relatively well-defined monolayer and bilayer domains.