EPR spectra of gable-type copper(II) porphyrin dimers in fluid solution: extraction of exchange interaction in weakly coupled doublet pairs

A comparison between EPR spectra of rigidly linked dicopper porphyrin dimers and those of the corresponding monocopper dimers (copper porphyrin-free base porphyrin dimers) in fluid solution reveals a very weak exchange interaction between the two copper spins. In these dimers, two porphyrin moieties are linked via an aromatic spacer such as benzene, naphthalene or phenanthrene in a gable-type geometry, with a distance of 10–13 Å. Although essentially all the spectra from the monocopper dimers are the same, exhibiting hyperfine (hf) structure due to the copper and nitrogen nuclei, the EPR spectral patterns of the dicopper dimers depend on the spacer molecule. Differences in hf patterns among the dicopper porphyrin dimers are ascribed to isotropic spin—spin coupling, i.e., exchange coupling between the two copper spins. This is because the anisotropic dipole—dipole interaction is averaged out due to random tumbling of the solute molecules in fluid solution. From the line shape analysis, the absolute value of the exchange interaction (|J|) is found to be 4 × 10^?4 cm^?1 ≦|J| < 3 × 10^?3 cm^?1 for the benzene linked dicopper dimer (Cu—Bz—Cu) whereas |J| ～ 1 × 10^?4cm^?1 for the other two dimers (Cu—Np—Cu and Cu—Pn—Cu). These values are comparable with or much smaller than the dipole—dipole coupling, which is estimated as about 1–3 × 10^?3 cm^?1 from the centre-to-centre distance. Since Cu—Bz—Cu shows a significantly larger |J| than Cu—Pn—Cu, despite a slightly longer centre-to-centre distance, and since no correlation could be obtained between |J| and the separation of the two copper atoms, it is likely that the interaction via spacer molecules is dominant between the two halves.