Luminescent supramolecular silver(I) coordination complexes of pyridyl-substituted phosphinites, phosphonites and amines.

Abstract

Interest in the design and synthesis of supramolecular metal-organic coordination polymers has increased exponentially in the last decade. This attraction comes along with advances in crystallographic instrumentation that has made the collection and processing of crystal data sets faster and more automated than ever. As a result, our understanding of the intra- and intermolecular forces that exist within the confines of the crystalline lattice is at a historic high. In this work we use several new bi- and tridentate pyridyl-substituted phosphinite ligands as well as a series of isomeric aminomethylpyridines to construct discrete, one-, two, and three-dimensional metal-organic coordination architectures with salts of the silver(I) cation. These complexes were then analyzed and discussed in terms of the variables (metal/ligand ratio, anion, temperature, solvent) and forces (donor-metal bonding, hydrogen-bonding, π-stacking, dispersion forces) that cause the structural motifs that are observed. The luminescence of these complexes was also studied and was seen to be variable with changes in structure and metal environment.