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Updated: Jun 5, 2025
Synthesis of Near-Infrared Emitting Gold Nanoclusters for Biological Applications
Published on: March 22, 2020
Heterochiral Self-Discrimination Driven Dimerization of Polynuclear Gold(I)-Sulfido Complexes with Enhanced
Liang-Liang Yan1, Ziyong Chen1, Vivian Wing-Wah Yam1
1Institute of Molecular Functional Materials, State Key Laboratory of Synthetic Chemistry, and Department of Chemistry, The University of Hong Kong, Pokfulam Road, Hong Kong, 999077, P. R. China.
Abstract:
Decanuclear chiral gold(I) sulfido clusters (SSDP-Au10 and RSDP-Au10) have been assembled by taking advantage of the judiciously selected SDP ligands (SDP = 7,7'-bis(diphenylphosphino)-1,1'-spirobiindane). Interestingly, an achiral heterodimer icosanuclear meso-cluster (mesoSDP-Au20) has been obtained by simply mixing SSDP-Au10 and RSDP-Au10 in a 1:1 ratio. These gold(I) complexes have been found to display intense near-infrared (NIR) luminescence with an emission maximum at around 750 nm in the solid state. The photoluminescence quantum yield (PLQY) of mesoSDP-Au20 in drop-cast solid-state thin film has been found to show a significant enhancement from 8 % in the SSDP-Au10 and RSDP-Au10 to 25 %. In addition, the dimerization process with heterochiral self-discrimination has been found to be sensitive to the solvent polarity and configuration of the diphosphine ligand. This work has provided a platform for the investigation and mechanistic understanding of heterochiral self-sorting and assembly processes.
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