Perfluorophenyl-Directed Giant Porphyrin J-Aggregates.

Quadrupolar interactions of porphyrin bearing two pentafluorophenylethynyl terminals (1) drove the formation of a successive one-dimensional staircase structure, i.e., J-aggregates, to yield millimeter-length needles with a single-crystalline character in methylcyclohexane solution. In contrast, π-stacked interactions of porphyrin bearing two nonfluorinated phenyl terminals (2) formed no aggregates in solution. A spin-cast film of 1 also showed bathochromic shift of the Soret and Q bands, indicating the formation of J-aggregates. The molecular arrangement of the J-aggregates was revealed by microbeam glazing-incidence wide-angle X-ray diffraction (GIWAXD), and was in good agreement with the optimized structure generated by density functional theory (DFT) calculations.