Dinaphthoporphycenes

Naphthobipyrrole is a potentially useful building block for porphyrin and porphyrin analogue synthesis. Reported here is a simple, generalizable synthetic route to alpha-formylated, beta-substituted naphthobipyrroles and their use in the preparation of binaphthoporphycenes. The resulting binaphthoporphycenes possess a planar geometry as determined via a single-crystal X-ray diffraction analysis; they also display absorption maxima that are bathochromically shifted compared to simple porphycenes.