Recently, the research work of Prof. Yongshu Xie group, entitled "Neo-Fused Hexaphyrin: A Molecular Puzzle Containing an N-Linked Pentaphyrin" was published in Angew. Chem. Int. Ed (DOI/10.1002/anie.201408307). This work is another breakthrough on porphyrins and porphyrinoids by Prof. Xie’s group, which is based on previous publications in JACS, 2013, 135, 19119 and Angew. Chem. Int. Ed., 2014, 53, 10779.

    Porphyrins widely occur in natural systems such as chlorophyll and heme, which exhibit important photoelectronic functions. The development of novel macrocycles with  specific functionality has long been an interesting research topic for chemists. In recent years, porphyrins and porphyrinoids have attracted considerable attention due to their versatile structures and properties. Among them, N-confused porphyrin is of particular interests in anion sensing, supermolecular assembly, stabilization of high-valent metals and luminescent materials in NIR region. In this work, cyclization  of  a  hexapyrrane with two terminal N-confused pyrroles afforded a C-N linked hexaphyrin, which undergoes fusion and subsequent ring open reactions to afford two other novel porphyrinoids. The two hexaphyrins exhibit strong emissions around 900 nm, and thus may be applied as NIR luminescent materials. This work has important theoretical significance in the syntheses of functional macrocycles, especially porphyrin and porphyrinoids.

    The experiments were completed by a PhD student Pingchun Wei. And this work was accomplished thanks to the helps from Prof. Hiroyuki Furuta at Kyushu University, Dr. Xin Li at KTH Royal Institute of Technology, Prof. Zhongping Ou at Jiangsu University and Prof. Seikweng Ng at University of Malaya. This work was financially supported by National Basic Research 973 Program, the Science Fund for Creative Research Groups, the Oriental Scholarship, and NCET.