Engineering optical properties of gold-coated nanoporous anodic alumina for biosensing.

The effect in the Fabry-Pérot optical interferences of nanoporous anodic alumina films coated with gold is studied as a function of the porosity and of the gold thickness by means of reflectance spectroscopy. Samples with porosities between 14 and 70% and gold thicknesses (10 and 20 nm) were considered. The sputtering of gold on the nanoporous anodic alumina (NAA) films results in an increase of the fringe intensity of the oscillations in the spectra resulting from Fabry-Pérot interferences in the porous layer, with a reduction in the maximum reflectance in the UV-visible region.

Gold-coated ordered nanoporous anodic alumina bilayers for future label-free interferometric biosensors.

A cost-effective label-free optical biosensor based on gold-coated self-ordered nanoporous anodic alumina bilayers is presented. The structure is formed by two uniform nanoporous layers of different porosity (i.e.

Supramolecular inclusion complexes of two cyclic zinc bisporphyrins with C60 and C70: structural, thermodynamic, and photophysical characterization.

The formation of thermodynamically stable inclusion complexes between two cyclic zinc bisporphyrins, differing in the saturation degree of the hydrocarbon linkers that connect their porphyrin units, and the fullerenes C(60) and C(70) is described. Binding and photophysical studies were performed in two solvents of very different polarity: toluene and dichloromethane. UV/Vis and fluorescence titration experiments showed π-π interactions between the cyclic zinc bisporphyrins and the fullerenes.

Complexation of Sc3N@C80 endohedral fullerene with cyclic Zn-bisporphyrins: solid state and solution studies.

We report the synthesis of two cyclic β-pyrrole unsubstituted meso-tetraphenyl bisporphyrins in which the porphyrin units are connected by two 2,3-hexadiynyl-1,6-dioxo or two hexyl-1,6-dioxo spacers, respectively. Both cyclic porphyrin dimers exist in solution as mixtures of two conformational isomers. In the solid state, the receptor with diynyl spacers forms a 1:1 complex with the icosahedral (I(h)) isomer of the trimetallic nitride endohedral fullerene Sc(3)N@C(80).

Regioisomeric control induced by DABCO coordination to rotatable self-assembled bis- and tetraporphyrin α,γ-cyclic octapeptide dimers.

The design and synthesis of two α,γ-cyclic octapeptides decorated with one and two Zn-porphyrin units in their periphery is described. In nonpolar organic solvents the α,γ-cyclic octapeptides quantitatively self-assemble into Zn-bis- or -tetraporphyrin architectures that could act as molecular tweezers. The self-assembly process, however, is not regioselective and affords a mixture of different regioisomers that are involved in chemical exchange processes.