Electronic and steric effects of substituents on the coordinating properties of porphyrins

Kinetics of the formation of zinc complexes of porphyrin with various substituents was studied in acetic acid and pyridine. The introduction of strong electron-withdrawing substituents (nitro groups) to the meso -positions of the porphyrin macrocycle was shown to change the reaction rate by an order of magnitude or less compared to the phenyl-substituted analogs. However, the introduction of a large number of bulky substituents leads to the deformation of the porphyrin ligand and thus affects much stronger the coordination properties of porphyrins, decreasing or increasing the rate of the complexation reaction by several orders of magnitude.