The Structure and Properties of Phthalocyanines

The elucidation of the structure of the phthalocyanines followed some pioneering research into the chemistry of the system by Linstead of Imperial College, University of London. The structure that we now recognise was first proposed from the results of analysis of a number of metal phthalocyanines, which provided the molecular formulae, and from an investigation of the products from degradation studies. Finally, Robertson confirmed the structure as a result of one of the classical applications of single crystal X-ray crystallography. 

In view of the immense commercial importance of phthalocyanines as pigments, it is perhaps surprising that only a few are of importance as textile dyes. This is primarily due to the size of the molecules they are too large to allow penetration into many fibres, especially the synthetic fibres polyester and polyacrylonitrile. An example of a phthalocyanine dye which may be used to dye cellulosic substrates such as cotton and paper is C. I. Direct Blue 86 (96), a disulfonated copper phthalocyanine. In addition, a few blue reactive dyes for cotton incorporate the copper phthalocyanine system as the chromophoric unit (Chapter 8). 

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Dann, A.J., H. Hoshi, and Y. Mayurama (1990). The structure and properties of phthalocyanine films grown by the molecular beam epitaxy technique. I. Preparation and characterization. J. Appl. Phys. 67, 1371. 

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