Ricerc@Sapienza

The amphiphilic Zn-salophen complexes have lately been receiving attention due to their
aggregation behaviour, dependent upon some experimental parameters, such as concentration
and polarity of solvents. The possibility to control their aggregation morphologies, and their
well known capability to accept one axially coordinated donor species make them suitable
candidates for the development of new materials with applications in sensing. The search of
new amphiphilic derivatives of Zn-salophenes is thus an active research field. Our group have
recently been working on the functionalization of bile acids which are an important class of
natural surfactants showing amphiphilic properties strictly related to their rigid backbones.
We prepared new derivatives linking natural bile acids to other natural compounds, such as
sugars and aminoacids. The aggregation properties of the resulting derivatives were studied,
and interesting aggregates and nanostructures were observed, making these compounds ideal
building blocks for the bottom up synthesis of new materials for applications in the field of
materials chemistry, in pharmacology and in the field of nanotechnologies, also thanks to the
morphological variability.
Thus here we describe the functionalization of metal-salophen complexes with substituted
bile acids to obtain complex derivatives, in principle able to aggregate both thanks to the
metal salophenic core, and bile acid subunit. The strategies to functionalize bile acid
backbone at C-3 or at its side chain are discussed.