Source: School of Chemistry
Written by: School of Chemistry
Edited by: Wang Dongmei

Metal?organic complexes assembled from coordinative interactions are known to be able to display a wide range of photoluminescent behaviors benefiting from an extensive number of metal ions, organic linkers, and inclusion guests, depending on the multifaceted nature of their chemical structures and photophysical properties. In the past two decades, the white-light-emitting (WLE) and photoluminescent color-tuning (PLCT) materials based on the single-phase metal?organic coordination assemblies have merited particular attention and gained substantial advances. 
 
Prof. Mei Pan and Cheng-Yong Su’s group at School of Chemistry, Sun Yat-sen University has been engaged in the study of PL-functional metal-organic coordination assemblies, and accomplished a series of achievement in this area, including, 1) By presetting of opto-electronic and stereo-active Ru-metalloligand, photo-active metal-organic cages are assembled due to the thermal/kinetic stability discrepancy between different coordination bonds, thereby developing a photochemical/photophysical supramolecular container (JACS 2014; Nat. Commun. 2016); 2) Via the excited-state proton/energy transfer attributes of multi-level ligands, specific photoluminescence modulating and responding coordination assemblies are constructed, and applied to optical detecting and anti-counterfeiting film devices (Nat. Commun. 2017; Chem. 2018; Chem. Commun. 2018; Chem. Eur. J. 2018; JMCC 2018; JMCC 2017; JMCC 2016); 3) By controlling the spatially epitaxial growth of hetero-Ln-MOF hierarchical single crystals, domain- and orientation-tunable multicolor photoluminescence is achieved, and single crystal micro-device models combining spectral and spatial coding capabilities are established (ACIE  2017; Nat. Commun. 2018; Chem. Eur. J. 2016; Chem. Commun. 2015; Chem. Commun. 2014; Inorg. Chem. 2015; Chem. Mater. 2012).
 

 
Recently, the group published a review article “Single-Phase White-Light-Emitting and Photoluminescent Color-Tuning Coordination Assemblies” in Chemical Reviews, based on their work and also related works from dometic and abroad. In this review, an overview of recent progress in this field was deeply analyzed, starting from the origin, generation, and manipulation of different types of photoluminescence (PL) in metal-organic assemblies. Then, coordination assemblies in this topic were classified into three categories, and some state-of-the-art assembly methods and successful design models relevant to the above three categories are elaborated. Potential applications in the fields of lighting and displaying, sensing and detecting, and barcoding and patterning are surveyed, and at the end, possible prospects and challenges for future development along this line are proposed.

Link to the article: https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acs.chemrev.8b00222