Designing a dye you can count on

Natural substances such as chlorophyll and the heme pigment of red blood cells contain colorful molecules known as porphyrins. They owe their exceptional visual characteristics to a ‘macrocyclic’ chemical structure that links several small rings together into a highly conjugated, aromatic framework. However, chemists who have synthesized porphyrin derivatives have sometimes found that this aromaticity—and any associated optical absorptions—simply disappears.

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