A water soluble β-cyclodextrin (CD-NA) bearing seven naphthoyl chromophores forms very stable 1:1 complexes with a merocyanine laser dye DCM-OH (4-(dicyanomethylene)-2-methyl-6-(p-(bis(hydroxyethyl)amino)styryl)-4H-pyran). The antenna effect, i.e. energy transfer from the naphthoyl antenna chromomophores to the encased dye, is shown to occur with 100% efficiency. The stability of the complexes is very high (K s ≈ 105) owing to the contribution of the naphthoate residues. The structural features of the complexes have been examined in detail:  circular dichroism experiments confirm the expected axial orientation of DCM-OH in the cavity of CD-NA, and fluorescence anisotropy measurements together with 13C-NMR longitudinal relaxation time measurements show that the complex formed between CD-NA and DCM-OH is tight. The mechanisms of homotransfer (i.e., between naphthoate chromophores) and heterotransfer (i.e., from naphthoate chromophores to DCM-OH included in the cavity) are discussed in light of existing theories. In both cases, the major contribution arises more likely from Coulombic interaction than from short-range interactions. Such multichromophoric cyclodextrins are good models for mimicry of the antenna function in photosynthesis and show great promise as photochemical microreactors.

The syntheses and properties of two calixarene-based fluorescent molecular sensors are reported. These comprise tert-butylcalix[4]arene either with one appended fluorophore and three ester groups (Calix-AMN1). or with four appended fluorophores (Calix-AMN4). The fluorophore is 6-acyl-2-methoxynaphthalene (AMN), which contains an electron-donating substituent (methoxy group) conjugated to an electron-withdrawing substituent (carbonyl group); this allows photoinduced charge transfer (PCT) to occur upon excitation. The investigated fluoroionophores thus belong to the family of PCT fluorescent molecular sensors. In addition to the expected red shifts of the absorption and emission spectra upon cation binding, a drastic enhancement of the fluorescence quantum yield-in an "off- on" fashion comparable to that seen in photoinduced electron transfer (PET) molecular sensors-was observed. For Calix-AMN1. it increases from 10(-3) for the free ligand to 0.68 for the complex with Ca2+. This exceptional behaviour can be interpreted in terms of the relative locations of the npi* and pipi* levels, which depend on the charge density of the bound cation. For Calix-AMN4. in addition to the photophysical effects observed for Calix-AMN1, interactions between the chromophores by complexation with some cations have been found in the ground state (hypochromic effect) and in the excited state (excimer formation). Steady-state fluorescence anisotropy measurements for the system Na+ is included in Calix-AMN4, show a depolarization effect due to energy transfer (homotransfer) between the fluorophores. Regarding the complexing properties, a high selectivity for Na+ over K+, Li+, Ca2+ and Mg2+ was observed in ethanol and ethanol-water mixtures. The selectivity (Na+/other cations) expressed as the ratio of the stability constants was found to be more than 400.