Heteroatom-Containing Porphyrin Analogues

The heteroatom-containing porphyrin analogues or core-modified porphyrins that resulted from the replacement of one or two pyrrole rings with other five-membered heterocycles such as furan, thiophene, selenophene, tellurophene, indene, phosphole, and silole are highly promising macrocycles and exhibit quite different physicochemical properties compared to regular azaporphyrins. The properties of heteroporphyrins depend on the nature and number of different heterocycle(s) present in place of pyrrole ring(s). The heteroporphyrins provide unique and unprecedented coordination environments for metals. Unlike regular porphyrins, the monoheteroporphyrins are known to stabilize metals in unusual oxidation states such as Cu and Ni in +1 oxidation states. The diheteroporphyrins, which are neutral macrocycles without ionizable protons, also showed interesting coordination chemistry. Thus, significant progress has been made in last few decades on core-modified porphyrins in terms of their synthesis, their use in building multiporphyrin arrays for light-harvesting applications, their use as ligands to form interesting metal complexes, and also their use for several other studies. The synthetic methods available in the literature allow one to prepare mono- and diheteroporphyrins and their functionalized derivatives, which were used extensively to prepare several covalent and noncovalent heteroporphyrin-based multiporphyrin arrays. The methods are also developed to synthesize different hetero analogues of porphyrin derivatives such as heterocorroles, heterochlorins, heterocarbaporphyrinoids, heteroatom-substituted confused porphyrins, and so on. This Review summarizes the key developments that have occurred in heteroporphyrin chemistry over the last four decades.