A rhenium complex doped in a silica molecular sieve for molecular oxygen sensing: Construction and characterization

This paper reported a diamine ligand and its Re(I) complex for potential application in oxygen sensing. The novelty of this diamine ligand localized at its increased conjugation chain which had a typical electron-withdrawing group of 1,3,4-oxadiazole. Electronic distribution of excited electrons and their lifetime were supposed to be increased, favoring oxygen sensing collision. This hypothesis was confirmed by single crystal analysis, theoretical calculation and photophysical measurement. It was found that this Re(I) complex had a long-lived emission peaking at 545 nm, favoring sensing application. By doping this complex into a silica matrix MCM-41, oxygen sensing performance and mechanism of the resulting composites were discussed in detail. Non-linear Stern-Volmer working curves were observed with maximum sensitivity of 5.54 and short response time of ~6 s.