Preparation and characterization of hydrophobic porphyrin nanoaggregates dispersed in polyvinyl alcohol films

Abstract

It is known that among other applications porphyrin aggregates can be used in the detection of volatile organic compounds (VOC) and gases and vapors in general. However, the use of porphyrins for this purpose has been limited by the fact that usually the porphyrin and the polymer employed as a matrix are soluble in different media, such as polyvinyl alcohol and tetraphenylporphyrin, respectively. In this paper, we discuss how starting from stable aqueous solutions of hydrophobic porphyrins one can use the drop coating method to prepare polyvinyl alcohol polymer matrices containing porphyrin aggregates. The resulting solid films were characterized by optical techniques, and we have used UV-vis absorption spectroscopy to analyze how they interact with vapors of HCl , NO 2 and NH 3 .