Amino‐acid‐encoded enantioselective photocatalysis in self‐assembled porphyrin‐amino acid derivatives

Porphyrin‐based nanomaterials have attracted much attention in photocatalysis due to their excellent photo‐electrocatalytic ability and strong intermolecular interaction forces. In this study, a series of chiral assemblies of porphyrin‐amino acid derivatives were prepared by linking different types of amino acids with terminal modifications to tetrakis(4‐carboxyphenyl)porphyrin via covalent bonding and their catalytic ability in enantioselective photocatalytic oxidation of tyrosine was investigated. The results show that the amino acid type and terminal groups significantly affect the macroscopic assembly morphology and microscopic chiral space of the porphyrin‐amino acid derivatives, which is consistent with the results of molecular dynamics simulations and further impacts on the rate and enantioselectivity of tyrosine chiral photocatalytic oxidation. These results provide new avenues for applying porphyrin derivatives in chiral photocatalysis.