Self assembled monolayers of chiral porphyrin diads as sensing material for enantioselective chemical sensors

Porphyrin diads have been synthesized and studied as enantioselective receptor for chiral recognition in solid state. Self-assembled monolayers have been deposited onto the gold electrodes of thickness shear mode resonators to be exploited as sensing materials of nanogravimetric sensors operating in the gas phase. The enantiodiscrimination properties of such a sensors towards the enantiomeric pairs of chiral analytes have been studied. While in the case of analytes bearing donor ligand atoms we did not observe a significant enantioselectivity, a significant degree of chiral discrimination has been observed in the case of limonene; this result is particularly encouraging for the potential development of enantioselective chemical sensors to be exploited in an array configuration.