Thin-molecular films have been used for a wide variety of purposes such as sensors, catalysis, and controlling molecular architecture, depending on the substrate and molecular structure of the scaffold molecules. Recently, our interests focused on using molecular porous films of porphyrin squares as molecular sieves, high sensitivity chemical sensors and use in heterogeneous catalysis. Due to the ease of preparation and synthesis of zirconium-phosphonate multilayers (ZPM) thin-films, they have been used for a wide variety of applications. We are now in process of developing new phosphonate functionalized porphyrin squares for thin-film fabrication. Nonetheless, those squares that we have made have solubility problem in organic solvents for thin-film usage. Then my research goal is to increase their solubility or synthesize a new version of phosphonate functionalized porphyrin squares.

Acknowledgement: Richard W. Gurney and SonBinh T. Nguyen