Chiral and achiral basket-handle porphyrins: short synthesis and stereostructures of these versatile building blocks.

Both, chiral and achiral basket-handle porphyrins were synthesized via a short, reliable, and efficient route in multigram quantities. Standard synthetic protocols such as metalation of the macrocycle, halogenation, and borylation of the porphyrin core or alkyl- and arylation with lithium organyls were successfully adapted. The planar-chiral representatives were resolved into their enantiomers, whose absolute configurations were determined by comparison of experimental CD spectra with TDCAM-B3LYP calculated ones.