New water-soluble chemo-responsive luminescent materials

The essence of life and all chemical events, viz. the functionality of molecules, is a result of the chemical constitution of a given molecule or a complex supplemented by the interplay of the weak intermolecular interactions they manifest in solid, liquid or gas state. As the covalently constructed molecular skeleton defines the chemical entity as a whole, the covalent 3-D structure, its thermal movement and the functional groups of any kind attached to it result in the observed functionality of the chemical entity. The same applies also to luminescent materials, especially to luminescent transition metal complexes. Indeed the use of such systems is particularly for luminescent transition metal complexes of Iridium(III), Ruthenium(II), Rhenium(I) and Platinum(II), have recently attracted much interest in both academia and industrial research. These complexes have found use in a variety of applications as emissive dopants in Organic Light Emitting Diodes (OLEDs) and Light-Emitting Electrochemical Cell (LEECs), solar energy conversion, biological sensing, cell imaging, photocatalysis and biolabels. Moreover, the photophysical properties of such compounds are noticeably sensitive to their environment, such as solvent polarity, pH and temperature and such sensitivity has been widely employed for detecting small molecules or ions. These findings clearly confirm that photophysical and redox properties of such materials are strictly correlated to their organization and suggest that the creation of supramolecular architectures in which secondary interactions could play an important role for their self-assembling, could also be used for a new generation of materials.
 
The goal of the project is to prepare and study the properties of new water-soluble chemo-responsive luminescent nanomolecules and - assemblies. They are obtained either through synthetic chemistry or via weak intermolecular interactions producing soft or crystalline luminescent materials. Multi-functional chemo-responsive nanomolecules and self-assembling luminescent metal complexes, both possess enhanced or emerging properties, will be used to monitor chemo-responsive and molecular recognitions events. Possible applications of these new materials in the biomedical area or in electro-optic devices are foreseen.