Evolution of Nanoflowers and Nanospheres of Zinc Bisporphyrinate Tweezers at the Air/Water Interface

Although the sophisticated Langmuir and Langmuir–Blodgett (LB) techniques facilitate the fabrication of uniform ultrathin monolayer and films, they are also revealed as powerful tools for the bottom–up construction of the nanostructures through the air/water interface. In this paper, unique nanoflowers or nanospheres were constructed based on the synthesized m-phthalic diamide-linked zinc bisporphyrinate tweezers using the Langmuir and LB techniques. It was found that the two tweezer-type zinc bisporphyrinates could form stable two-dimensional spreading films at the air/water interface, which could be subsequently transferred onto solid substrates using the vertical lifting method. Atomic force microscopy (AFM) revealed that at the initial spreading stage, the compound formed flat disklike domains and then hierarchically evolved into nanoflowers or nanospheres upon compressing the floating film. Such nanostructures have not been reported before and cannot be fabricated using the other self-assembly methods.