Room temperature molecular up conversion in solution.
basic_science · Level V
Where this comes from
- Record sourced from PubMed, PMID 27302144.
- Also identified by DOI 10.1038/ncomms11978 and PMC identifier 4912637.
- Licence recorded as CC BY.
- The licence permits redistribution, so the abstract is shown in full and the full text is available from the publisher.
Abstract
Up conversion is an Anti-Stokes luminescent process by which photons of low energy are piled up to generate light at a higher energy. Here we show that the addition of fluoride anions to a D2O solution of a macrocyclic erbium complex leads to the formation of a supramolecular [(ErL)2F](+) assembly in which fluoride is sandwiched between two complexes, held together by the synergistic interactions of the Er-F-Er bridging bond, four intercomplex hydrogen bonds and two aromatic stacking interactions. Room temperature excitation into the Er absorption bands at 980 nm of a solution of the complex in D2O results in the observation of up converted emission at 525, 550 and 650 nm attributed to Er centred transitions via a two-step excitation. The up conversion signal is dramatically increased upon formation of the [(ErL)2F](+) dimer in the presence of 0.5 equivalents of fluoride anions.