Luminescent properties of Ln(III) complexes with 2-[(phenylamino)methylene]-5,5-dimethyl-cyclohexane-1,3-dione as an antenna

Solvatomorphic phase transitions and tunable luminescence emission in lanthanide metal-organic frameworks

Four new metal-organic frameworks with the formulae [Sm2(phen)2(NO3)2(chdc)2]·2solv, where solv = N,N-dimethylformamide (DMF; 1), N,N-dimethylacetamide (DMA; 2), N,N-diethylformamide (DEF; 3), N-formylpiperidine (NFP; 4), phen = 1,10-phenanthroline and chdc2- = trans-1,4-cyclohexanedicarboxylate were synthesized and structurally characterized. These compounds are based on similar binuclear samarium(III)-carboxylate blocks, bound by flexible chdc linkers into layered sql-type coordination networks. The amide solvents drive different intralayer block orientations between 1 and 2-4 and different layer-to-layer packings in all the described compounds. A pronounced dependence of the emission color upon the excitation wavelength variation was determined for 1-4, while the relative impacts of Sm3+ and phen emission on overall luminescence were found to depend strongly on these packings, and their reasonable correlation to the distances between the closest π-π-stacked phen moieties in the structures was revealed. Phase transitions between compounds 1-4 were studied by means of powder X-ray diffraction. Additionally, bimetallic near-white luminophores were obtained for phases 3 and 4 by doping their synthetic systems with a minor (∼5%) Tb3+ additive. In general, this study shows a possibility of tuning the luminescence properties of porous metal-organic frameworks by minor structural differences induced by solvent-driven dynamics with no apparent quenching or other direct impact on the optical properties of the included solvent.

Aliphatic-Bridged Early Lanthanide Metal–Organic Frameworks: Topological Polymorphism and Excitation-Dependent Luminescence

Six new three-dimensional metal–organic frameworks based on early lanthanide(III) cations and trans-1,4-cyclohexanedicarboxylic acid (H2chdc) were obtained. Their crystal structures were determined by single-crystal X-ray diffraction analysis. The structure of [La2(H2O)4(chdc)3]·2DMF·H2O (1; DMF = N,N-dimethylformamide) contains one-dimensional infinite La(III)-carboxylate chains interconnected by cyclohexane moieties to form a highly porous polymeric lattice with 30% solvent accessible volume. Compounds [Ln2(phen)2(chdc)3]·0.75DMF (2Ln; Ln3+ = Ce3+, Pr3+, Nd3+ and Sm3+; phen = 1,10-phenanthroline) are based on binuclear carboxylate building blocks, which are decorated by chelate phenanthroline ligands and interconnected by cyclohexane moieties to form more dense isostructural coordination frameworks with primitive cubic pcu topology. Compound [Nd2(phen)2(chdc)3]·2DMF·0.67H2O (3) is based on secondary building units similar to 2Ln and contains a coordination lattice isomeric to 2Ln with a rare hexagonal helical snz topology. Thermal stability and luminescent properties were investigated. For 2Sm, a strong and nonmonotonous dependence of the luminescence color on the variation of excitation wavelength was revealed, changing its emission from pinkish red at λex = 340 nm to white at λex = 400 nm, and then to yellow at lower excitation energies. Such nonlinear behavior was rationalized in terms of the contribution of several different luminescence mechanisms. Thus, 2Sm is a rather rare example of a highly tunable monometallic lanthanide-based luminophore with possible applications in light-emitting devices and optical data processing.