Long luminescence lifetimes, high quantum yields and large Stokes shifts of lanthanide complexes can be advantageous for their use as imaging agents. There have been applications of lanthanide complexes as fluorescence resonance energy transfer donors for the study of extracellular processes.Ir-based and Ln-based cell imaging agents are of great interest. Work from the Ward group has focused on synthesising a novel array of iridium (III) complexes containing a binding site for lanthanide ions and studying the d-f energy-transfer properties of these complexes, as well as their potential use as dual-luminescent cell-imaging agents. To date there has been no work on heterobimetallic d/f complexes as cell-imaging agents and we are interested in dual emitters in which partial Ir-Ln energy-transfer results in a combination of blue and red luminescence with different lifetimes.Fundamental studies on the mechanisms of d-f energy-transfer have therefore been carried out showing a combination of Dexter energy-transfer and photoinduced electron-transfer based sensitisation mechanisms.

Synthesis and application of iridium (III) chromophores for cell-imaging and sensitisation of lanthanides

248th National Meeting (2014)

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