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Highly emissive platinum(II) metallacages

Nature Chemistry volume 7, pages 342–348 (2015)Cite this article

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Abstract

Light-emitting materials, especially those with tunable wavelengths, attract considerable attention for applications in optoelectronic devices, fluorescent probes, sensors and so on. Many species evaluated for these purposes either emit as a dilute solution or on aggregation, with the former often self-quenching at high concentrations, and the latter falling dark when aggregation is disrupted. Here we preserve emissive behaviour at both low- and high-concentration regimes for two discrete supramolecular coordination complexes (SCCs). These tetragonal prismatic SCCs are self-assembled on mixing a metal acceptor, Pt(PEt3)2(OSO2CF3)2, with two organic donors, a pyridyl-decorated tetraphenylethylene and one of two benzene dicarboxylate species. The rigid organization of these fluorescence-active ligands imparts an emissive behaviour to dilute solutions of the resulting assemblies. Furthermore, on aggregation the prisms exhibit variable-wavelength visible-light emission, including rare white-light emission in tetrahydrofuran. The favourable photophysical properties and solvent-dependent aggregation behaviour provide a means to tune emission wavelengths.

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Figure 1: Synthesis and characterization of tetragonal prisms 1 and 2.
Figure 2: AIE of 1 and 2.
Figure 3: Solvent effect on the light-emitting properties of 1 and 2.
Figure 4: Normalized fluorescence emission spectra and photograph (inset) of 2 in different ester solvents (λex = 355 nm, c = 10.0 μM).

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Acknowledgements

This work was supported by the National Basic Research Program (2013CB834502), the Natural Sciences Foundation of China (91027006, 21125417, 21434005) and the State Key Laboratory of Chemical Engineering. P.J.S. thanks the National Sciences Foundation (1212799) for financial support.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Chemistry, Center for Chemistry of High-Performance & Novel Materials, State Key Laboratory of Chemical Engineering, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou, 310027, China

    Xuzhou Yan, Pi Wang & Feihe Huang

  2. Department of Chemistry, University at Buffalo, 359 Natural Sciences Complex, Buffalo, 14260, New York, USA

    Timothy R. Cook

  3. Department of Chemistry, University of Utah, 315 South 1400 East, Room 2020, Salt Lake City, 84112, Utah, USA

    Peter J. Stang

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  1. Xuzhou Yan
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Contributions

X.Y., F.H. and P.J.S. conceived and designed the experiments. X.Y., T.R.C. and P.W. performed the experiments and analysed the data. X.Y., T.R.C., F.H. and P.J.S. co-wrote the paper.

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Correspondence to Feihe Huang or Peter J. Stang.

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Yan, X., Cook, T., Wang, P. et al. Highly emissive platinum(II) metallacages. Nature Chem 7, 342–348 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1038/nchem.2201

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