Carbon nanotubes are novel nano-materials with one-dimentional nanostructure. They have many unique physical and chemical properties. Porphyrin has strong absorption in visabal light region. The large π conjugated system made it a good electron donor and light harvest unit for artifical photosynthetic systems. The combination of electron donor carbon nanotubes with porphyrin and the covalent and non-covalent porphyrin modification of carbon nanotubes can improve solubility and dispersibility of carbon nanotubes in solvent and carry out effective electron transfer between them to form porphyrin-carbon nanotube hybrid systems with unique photoelectric and optical properties. These kind of hybrid systems have a good application prospect and are hot point in related research fields. In this review, recent progress of the construction and properties of these hybrid systems is summarized.

Key words: carbon nanotube, porphyrin, electron transfer, chemical functionalization