Supramolecular sensing mechanism of corrole thin films

Porphyrins and related macrocycles have been widely exploited as sensing layers of different kind of chemical sensors. Among the different porphyrin analogs, corrole has been object of an increasing attention in the last few years; because of its peculiar coordination chemistry, corrole can be a useful system to study the influence of analytes coordination in an overall sensing mechanism. We have synthesized different corrole derivatives in order to use them as sensing layers of nanogravimetric chemical sensors. The resulting sensors have been exposed to volatile organic compounds and gases chosen as model analytes. Sensors performances have been compared with those of similar devices functionalized with analogous porphyrin derivatives. The results show that in the case of corrole the supramolecular binding mechanism is more efficient than coordination for CO and NO detection, and that the two binding mechanisms can actually cooperate to increase the sensitivity. (C) 2012 Elsevier B. V. All rights reserved.