Graduate student Yasuyuki Yamamoto, Dr. Takuya Iida (Director), Dr. Shiho Tokonami (Deputy Director), Research Institute for Light-induced Acceleration System (RILACS), Graduate school of Science, Osaka Prefecture University, Dr. Hideki Yorimitsu, Department of Chemistry, Graduate school of Science, Kyoto University and other members of their research group have successfully produced many macroscopically anisotropic petal-like structures, consisting of porphyrin dimers by newly developed light-induced solvothermal assembly (LSTA) with smooth evaporation in a confined volatile organic solvent.
LSTA is a method via light-induced evaporation process for assembling porphyrin-based molecules into polycrystalline with the polarisation-dependent optical extinction spectra. This novel method enables laser-mediated assembly of arbitrary nanoscale organic molecules into unconventional crystal polymorphs at the desired position on the substrate. LSTA could be a breakthrough in material development for nanoelectronics, nanophotonics and for next-generation bio-inspired photonic information technologies in various research fields of photonic and quantum technologies.

These results were published in Scientific Reports (online) on July 23rd, 2018.

Title: ”Macroscopically Anisotropic Structures Produced by Light-induced Solvothermal Assembly of Porphyrin Dimers”

• Scientific Reports (Nature Research) Website

• The full text of press release (Japanese language)（788KB）

Main point of research

Figure: The image of polycrystalline of porphyrin dimers produced by light –induced solvothermal assembly (LSTA), and the polarisation-dependence of optical transmission images of LSTA-produced structures

• Many macroscopically anisotropic structures consisting of porphyrin dimers were successfully produced by light-induced solvothermal assembly with smooth evaporation in a confined volatile organic solvent.
• “Light-induced solvothermal assembly (LSTA)” of diporphyrin can produce a sub-millimetre redial assembly of the ten-micrometre-sized polycrystalline via light-induced fluid flow around a photothermally generated bubble on a gold nanofilm.
• The developed method can be applied to a large array and polycrystalline of various kinds of organic molecules, and facilitate the production of anisotropic materials as next generation optical elements and electronic elements.

Research grant

This research was supported by JST ACT-C （No.JPMJCR12ZE）, JSPS Grand-in-Aid for Scientific Research (A) （17H00856）, Grand-in-Aid for Scientific Research (B) （No.15H03010）, Key project of Osaka Prefecture University, The Canon Foundation, Grand-in-Aid for JSPS Fellows （No.18J13307）, Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research on Innovative Areas “Nano-Material Manipulation and Structural Order Control with Optical Forces”（No.16H06507）, Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research on Innovative Areas “Science of Atomic Layers” （No.25107002） and others.