Synthesis

Abstract

Although synthesis of linear oligopyrroles was frequently undertaken to obtain certain linear oligopyrroles, the vast majority of such syntheses were developed on the road to cyclic tetrapyrroles. Therefore reviews of the latter efforts must include the synthesis of linear oligopyrrolic precursors. We may mention respective references for porphyrins [7,49,698–707], chlorophyll [708] and corrins [20,241–243,678,699,707]. Fewer reviews are entirely devoted to linear oligopyrroles [7,709–716]. It is neither intended to reproduce all the material covered in these compilations, nor is it possible to describe and discuss all syntheses of individual linear oligopyrroles which have accumulated in the literature. Instead, an attempt will be made in this chapter to formalize synthesis of linear oligopyrroles and to illustrate principles and main classes of compounds by means of examples.