Efficiency of Dinucleosides as the Backbone to Pre-Organize Multi-Porphyrins and Enhance Their Stability as Sandwich Type Complexes with DABCO

Flexible linkers such as uridine or 2′-deoxyuridine pre-organize bis-porphyrins in a face-to-face conformation, thus forming stable sandwich complexes with a bidentate base such as 1,4-diazabicyclo[2.2.2]octane (DABCO). Increased stability can be even greater when a dinucleotide linker is used. Such pre-organization increases the association constant by one to two orders of magnitude when compared to the association constant of DABCO with a reference porphyrin. Comparison with rigid tweezers shows a better efficiency of nucleosidic dimers. Thus, the choice of rigid spacers is not the only way to pre-organize bis-porphyrins, and well-chosen nucleosidic linkers offer an interesting option for the synthesis of such devices.