In this study we report the design of three generations of ligands with the full conjugation of tetraphenylethylene (TPE) and 2,2':6',2"-terpyridine (TPY) to construct emissive materials. Due to the bulky size of the TPY substituents, the intramolecular rotations of ligands were partially restricted even in dilute solution, and thus leading to emission in both solution and solid states. Furthermore, TPE-TPY ligands were assembled with Cd(II) through coordination to introduce additional restriction of intramolecular rotation (RIR) and immobilize fluorophores into metallo-macrocycles, or rosettes-like scaffolds. Using ditopic ligand, a mixture of macrocycles was obtained; while, discrete hexameric and heptameric rosettes were assembled with tetratopic and hexatopic ligands, respectively, through multivalent interactions. Those three supramolecular rosettes were fully characterized by multinuclear NMR (1H and 13C) analysis, 2D NMR spectroscopy (COSY, DOSY and NOESY), ion-mobility mass spectrometry (IM-MS). More importantly, the fluorescent behavior of TPE-TPY ligands was preserved in these rosettes, which displayed tunable emissive properties with respect to different generations.

Self-assembly of emissive tetraphenylethylene-based supramolecular rosettes

254th National Meeting (2017)

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