Design and Synthesis of Jaws Porphyrin. The design of
“jaws” porphyrins evolved from an interplay of molecular
modeling and experiment. The basic bis-porphyrin motif was
cut from the common zigzag structural arrangement seen in self-
assembling tetraphenylporphyrin/fullerene cocrystallates.8 Vari-
ous linkers such as those illustrated in Figure 1 were used to
construct bis-porphyrins as fullerene binding hosts maintaining
this motif. The design criteria, based on cocrystallate structures,
allowed for a porphyrin-porphyrin intercenter distance of 11.5-
12 Å with interplanar porphyrin angles of 40-60°. Host-guest
complexes with C60 were constructed and subjected to geometry
optimization with molecular mechanics calculations. In each
case, the gas-phase binding enthalpy was determined together
with the geometry of the free bis-porphyrin host.