A Feasible Single-Solvent Nucleation and Growth Protocol for the Well-Defined Organization of Simple Porphyrins on Different Glass Composites

Herein we report the nucleation and growth of porphyrin molecular chromophores using a single-solvent deposition protocol. Various glass substrates were investigated, aiming to investigate their impact on the organization of tetraphenyl-porphyrin (TPP) towards well-defined architectures. A variety of aggregation morphologies were obtained upon optimizing several parameters, including the solvent and the temperature of evaporation. This work demonstrates for the first time that single-solvent evaporation results in nanostructures, avoiding the necessity of mixed-solvent reprecipitation. Additionally, we showed that simple symmetrical porphyrins do not need the presence of self-assembling peptides, ions or amphiphiles to induce the capability of forming well-defined structures. The results presented herein open new avenues for the development of complex and highly ordered architectures from simple building blocks towards advanced materials with tailored properties.