Synthesis of Porphyrins Bearing Hydrocarbon Tethers and Facile Covalent Attachment to Si(100)

The use of redox-active molecules as the active storage elements in memory chips requires the ability to attach the molecules to an electroactive surface in a reliable and robust manner. To explore the use of porphyrins tethered to silicon via carbosilane linkages, 17 porphyrins have been synthesized. Fourteen porphyrins bear a tether at a single meso site, and three porphyrins bear functional groups at two β sites for possible two-point attachment. Two high-temperature processing methods (400 °C under inert atmosphere) have been developed for rapid (minutes), facile covalent attachment to Si platforms. The high-temperature processing conditions afford attachment either by direct deposition of a dilute solution (1 μM−1 mM) of the porphyrin sample onto the Si substrate or sublimation of a neat sample onto the Si substrate. The availability of this diverse collection of porphyrins enables an in-depth examination of the effects of the tether (length, composition, terminal functional group, number of tethers) and steric bulk of nonlinking substituents on the information-storage properties of the porphyrin monolayers obtained upon attachment to silicon. Attachment proceeds readily with a wide variety of hydrocarbon tethers, including 2-(trimethylsilyl)ethynyl, vinyl, allyl, or 3-butenyl directly appended to the porphyrin and iodo, bromomethyl, 2-(trimethylsilyl)ethynyl, ethynyl, vinyl, or allyl appended to the 4-position of a meso-phenyl ring. No attachment occurs with substituents such as phenyl, p-tolyl, mesityl, or ethyl. Collectively, the studies show that the high-temperature attachment procedure (1) has broad scope encompassing diverse functional groups, (2) tolerates a variety of arene substituents, and (3) does not afford indiscriminate attachment. The high-temperature processing conditions are ideally suited for use in fabrication of hybrid molecular/semiconductor circuitry.