Aggregation-induced phosphorescence sensitization in two heptanuclear and decanuclear gold-silver sandwich clusters

Zhou Lu; Yu-Jie Yang; Wen-Xiu Ni; Mian Li; Yifang Zhao; Yong-Liang Huang; Dong Luo; Xiaoping Wang; Mohammad A Omary; Dan Li

doi:10.1039/d0sc05095d

Aggregation-induced phosphorescence sensitization in two heptanuclear and decanuclear gold-silver sandwich clusters

Chem Sci. 2020 Oct 30;12(2):702-708. doi: 10.1039/d0sc05095d.

Authors

Zhou Lu^{1

2}, Yu-Jie Yang³, Wen-Xiu Ni⁴, Mian Li³, Yifang Zhao¹, Yong-Liang Huang⁴, Dong Luo¹, Xiaoping Wang⁵, Mohammad A Omary², Dan Li¹

Affiliations

¹ College of Chemistry and Materials Science, Guangdong Provincial Key Laboratory of Functional Supramolecular Coordination Materials and Applications, Jinan University Guangzhou 510632 P. R. China danli@jnu.edu.cn.
² Department of Chemistry, University of North Texas 1155 Union Circle #305070 Denton Texas 76203 USA omary@unt.edu.
³ Department of Chemistry, Shantou University Guangdong 515063 P. R. China.
⁴ Department of Chemistry, Shantou University Medical College Shantou Guangdong 515041 P. R. China.
⁵ Neutron Scattering Division, Oak Ridge National Laboratory Oak Ridge Tennessee 37831-6475 USA.

Abstract

The strategy of aggregation-induced emission enhancement (AIEE) has been proven to be efficient in wide areas and has recently been adopted in the field of metal nanoclusters. However, the relationship between atomically precise clusters and AIEE is still unclear. Herein, we have successfully obtained two few-atom heterometallic gold-silver hepta-/decanuclear clusters, denoted Au6Ag and Au9Ag, and determined their structures by X-ray diffraction and mass spectrometry. The nature of the Au^I⋯Ag^I interactions thereof is demonstrated through energy decomposition analysis to be far-beyond typical closed-shell metal-metal interaction dominated by dispersion interaction. Furthermore, a positive correlation has been established between the particle size of the nanoaggregates and the photoluminescence quantum yield for Au6Ag, manifesting AIEE control upon varying the stoichiometric ratio of Au : Ag in atomically-precise clusters.