Experimental and Theoretical Investigations into the Paratropic Ring Current of a Porphyrin Sheet

Anomalous induced magnetic effects were observed in a directly fused square‐planar porphyrin sheet 1 , in that the protons above the center of the tetraporphyrin core were characteristically shifted downfield in the ¹H NMR spectrum. These observations suggest a rare paratropic ring‐current effect around the planar cyclooctatetraene (COT) core of 1 . To examine the spatial distribution of the induced magnetic effect, face‐to‐face dimeric complexes of porphyrin sheet 1 with bipyridyl‐type guest molecules ( G1 – G3 ) were prepared, which provided complexation‐induced shifts (CISs) of the guest molecules as a neat experimental guide to the distance dependence of the induced magnetic effects in 1 . Nucleus‐independent chemical shift (NICS) values of 1 were calculated by varying the distance of the probe from the plane of 1 . Whereas a simple bell‐type profile was estimated for the complex ( 1 )₂–( G1 )₄, the distance profiles of the CIS became increasingly flat for ( 1 )₂–( G2 )₄ and ( 1 )₂–( G3 )₄. Finally, we investigated the paratropic ring‐current effect just above the COT core of the complex 1 –( G4 )₂, which agrees well with the theoretically estimated distance‐dependent induced magnetic effect. Consequently, both experimental and theoretical studies on the complexes of porphyrin sheets with guest molecules revealed for the first time a unique distance dependence of the paratropic ring current.