Carbene-Metal Complexes As Molecular Scaffolds for Construction of through-Space Thermally Activated Delayed Fluorescence Emitters

Thermally Activated Delayed Fluorescence (TADF) Materials Based on Earth-Abundant Transition Metal Complexes: Synthesis, Design and Applications

Materials exhibiting thermally activated delayed fluorescence (TADF) based on transition metal complexes are currently gathering significant attention due to their technological potential. Their application extends beyond optoelectronics, in particular organic light-emitting diodes (OLEDs) and light-emitting electrochemical cells (LECs), and include also photocatalysis, sensing, and X-ray scintillators. From the perspective of sustainability, earth-abundant metal centers are preferred to rarer second- and third-transition series elements, thus determining a reduction in costs and toxicity but without compromising the overall performances. This review offers an overview of earth-abundant transition metal complexes exhibiting TADF and their application as photoconversion materials. Particular attention is devoted to the types of ligands employed, helping in the design of novel systems with enhanced TADF properties.

Through-Space Charge-Transfer Organogold(III) Complexes Enable High-Performance X-ray Scintillation and Imaging

Organic scintillators have recently attracted growing attention for X-ray detection in industrial and medical applications. However, these materials still face critical obstacles of low attenuation efficiency and/or inefficient triplet exciton utilization. Here we developed a new category of organogold(III) complexes, Tp-Au-1 and Tp-Au-2, through adopting a through-space interaction motif to realize high X-ray attenuation efficiency and efficient harvesting of triplet excitons for emission. Thanks to the efficient through-space charge transfer process, this panel of complexes achieved higher photoluminescence quantum yield and shorter radiative lifetimes compared with the through-bond reference complexes. Inspiringly, these organogold(III) complexes exhibited polarity-dependent emission origins: thermally activated delayed fluorescence and/or phosphorescence. Under X-ray irradiation, Tp-Au-2 manifested intense radioluminescence together with a record-high scintillation light yield of 77,600 photons MeV-1 for organic scintillators. The resulting scintillator screens demonstrated high-quality X-ray imaging with >16.0 line pairs mm-1 spatial resolution, outstripping most organic and inorganic scintillators. This finding provides a feasible strategy for the design of superior organic X-ray scintillators.

Two-Coordinate Thermally Activated Delayed Fluorescence Coinage Metal Complexes: Molecular Design, Photophysical Characters, and Device Application

Since the emergence of the first green light emission from a fluorescent thin-film organic light emitting diode (OLED) in the mid-1980s, a global consumer market for OLED displays has flourished over the past few decades. This growth can primarily be attributed to the development of noble metal phosphorescent emitters that facilitated remarkable gains in electrical conversion efficiency, a broadened color gamut, and vibrant image quality for OLED displays. Despite these achievements, the limited abundance of noble metals in the Earth's crust has spurred ongoing efforts to discover cost-effective electroluminescent materials. One particularly promising avenue is the exploration of thermally activated delayed fluorescence (TADF), a mechanism with the potential to fully harness excitons in OLEDs. Recently, investigations have unveiled TADF in a series of two-coordinate coinage metal (Cu, Ag, and Au) complexes. These organometallic TADF materials exhibit distinctive behavior in comparison to their organic counterparts. They offer benefits such as tunable emissive colors, short TADF emission lifetimes, high luminescent quantum yields, and reasonable stability. Impressively, both vacuum-deposited and solution-processed OLEDs incorporating these materials have achieved outstanding performance. This review encompasses various facets on two-coordinate TADF coinage metal complexes, including molecular design, photophysical characterizations, elucidation of structure-property relationships, and OLED applications.

Pyrazine as a More Efficient Luminophore than Benzene for Producing Red-Shifted and Enhanced Photoluminescence

The development of organic photoluminescent (PL) materials with red-shifted and enhanced emissions is beneficial to promoting their applications. Luminescent materials based on aromatic heterocycles (e.g., pyrazine) usually have red-shifted and enhanced photoluminescence compared with phenyl-based luminescent materials. In this work, the photoluminescence behaviors of pyrazine and its derivatives (o-dichloro-, o-dicyano-, and dichlorodicyano-substituted) are compared with those of benzene and its derivatives. All compounds exhibit fluorescence emissions ranging from blue to yellow, and the fluorescence emissions of pyrazinyl compounds are more red-shifted than those of phenyl compounds. Except for the o-dicyano-substituted compound, pyrazinyl compounds exhibit stronger fluorescence emissions than corresponding phenyl compounds in both pure substances and ethanol solutions. In addition, both 5,6-dichloro-2,3-dicyanopyrazine (P4) and 4,5-dichloro-1,2-dicyanobenzene (B4) exhibit room temperature phosphorescence, and the maximum delayed emission wavelength is red-shifted from 575 nm of B4 to 637 nm of P4. The energy gaps between the highest occupied molecular orbital and the lowest unoccupied molecular orbital of the monomers of pyrazinyl compounds are reduced by 0.07-1.37 eV compared with the monomers of phenyl compounds, which is the fundamental reason for the red-shifted emissions of the pyrazinyl compounds. Moreover, compared to B4, the smaller molecular spacing in the P4 crystal structure facilitates interlayer electron transfer and hence the formation of more extended through-space conjugation, resulting in the red-shifted emission of P4. This work proves that pyrazine is a more efficient luminophore than benzene for constructing PL compounds with longer emission wavelengths and higher quantum yields, which are important in guiding the design and preparation of organic PL materials.

A Rising Star: Luminescent Carbene-Metal-Amide Complexes

Coinage metal (gold, silver, and copper) complexes are attractive candidates to substitute the widely studied noble metal complexes, such as, iridium(III) and platinum(II), as luminescent materials in organic light-emitting diodes (OLEDs). However, the development of coinage metal complexes exhibiting high emission quantum yields and short exciton lifetimes is still a formidable challenge. In the past few years, coinage metal complexes featuring a carbene-metal-amide (CMA) motif have emerged as a new class of luminescent materials in OLEDs. Thanks to the coinage metal-bridged linear geometry, coplanar conformation, and the formation of excited states with dominant ligand-to-ligand charge transfer character and reduced metal d-orbital participation, most CMA complexes have high radiative rates via thermally activated delayed fluorescence. Currently, the family of CMA complexes have rapidly evolved and remarkable progresses in CMA-based OLEDs have been made. Here, a Concept article on CMA complexes is presented, with a focus on molecular design principles, the correlation between molecular structure/conformation and optoelectronic properties, as well as OLED performance. The future prospects of CMA complexes are also discussed.

Towards Fast Circularly Polarized Luminescence in 2-Coordinate Chiral Mechanochromic Copper(I) Carbene Complexes

A series of chiral mechanochromic copper(I) cAAC (cAAC=cyclic (alkyl)(amino)carbene) complexes with a variety of amide ligands have been studied with regard to their photophysical and chiroptical properties to elucidate structure-property relationships for the design of efficient triplet exciton emitters exhibiting circularly polarized luminescence. Depending on the environment, which determines the excited state energies, either thermally activated delayed fluorescence (TADF) from 1/3 LLCT states or phosphorescence from 3 LLCT/LC states occurs. However, neither chiral moieties at the carbene nor at the carbazolate ligands provide detectable luminescence dissymmetries glum . An exception is [Cu(phenoxazinyl)(cAAC)], showing orange to deep red TADF with λmax =601-715 nm in solution, powders and in PMMA. In this case, the amide ligand can undergo distortions in the excited state. This design motif leads to the first linear, non-aggregated CPL-active copper(I) complex with glum of -3.4 ⋅ 10-3 combined with a high radiative rate constant of 6.7 ⋅ 105  s-1 .

An Air- and Moisture-stable Zinc(II) Carbene Dithiolate Dimer Showing Fast Thermally Activated Delayed Fluorescence and Dexter Energy Transfer Catalysis

A dimeric Zn^II carbene complex featuring bridging and chelating benzene-1,2-dithiolate ligands is highly stable towards air and water. The donor-Zn-acceptor structure leads to visible light emission in the solid state, solution and polymer matrices with λ_max between 577-657 nm and, for zinc(II) complexes, unusually high radiative rate constants for triplet exciton decay of up to k_r =1.5×10⁵  s^-1 at room temperature. Variable temperature and DFT/MRCI studies show that a small energy gap between the ^1/3 LL/LMCT states of only 79 meV is responsible for efficient thermally activated delayed fluorescence (TADF). Time-resolved luminescence and transient absorption studies confirm the occurrence of long-lived, dominantly ligand-to-ligand charge transfer excited states in solution, allowing for application in Dexter energy transfer photocatalysis.

Synthesis, structures, and photophysical properties of two Cu(I) complexes supported by N-heterocyclic carbene and phosphine ligands

Two new cationic four-coordinate Cu(I) complexes supported by different chelating N-heterocyclic carbene ligands and the diphosphine ligand bis[2-(diphenylphosphino)phenyl]ether (POP) have been synthesized. The chemical structures of both complexes have been characterized by 1H NMR, 13C NMR, 31P NMR, and mass spectroscopy, and the crystal structure of one complex has been determined by single-crystal X-ray diffraction. Results of theoretical calculations indicate that the lowest energy electronic transitions of these complexes are mainly the metal-to-ligand charge transfer and ligand-to-ligand charge transfer transitions. The complexes in solid state show intense emissions with high photoluminescence quantum yields. The photophysical behavior at 298 and 77K shows that emissions of these complexes at room temperature are thermally activated delayed fluorescence mixed with phosphorescence.

A Green Synthesis of Carbene-Metal-Amides (CMAs) and Carboline-Derived CMAs with Potent in vitro and ex vivo Anticancer Activity

The modularity and ease of synthesis of carbene-metal-amide (CMA) complexes based on the coinage metals (Au, Ag, Cu) and N-heterocyclic carbenes (NHCs) as ancillary ligands pave the way for the expansion of their applications beyond photochemistry and catalysis. Herein, we further improve the synthesis of such compounds by circumventing the use of toxic organic solvents which were previously required for their purification, and we expand their scope to include complexes incorporating carbolines as the amido fragments. The novel complexes are screened both in vitro and ex vivo, against several cancer cell lines and high-grade serous ovarian cancer (HGSOC) tumoroids, respectively. Excellent cytotoxicity values are obtained for most complexes, while the structural variety of the CMA library screened thus far, provides promising leads for future developments. Variations of all three components (NHC, metal, amido ligand), enable the establishment of trends regarding cytotoxicity and selectivity towards cancerous over normal cells.