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. (C) 2007 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.