Hexaphenylbenzene‐Based Deep Blue‐Emissive Metallacages as Donors for Light‐Harvesting Systems

Abstract

AbstractWe herein report the preparation of a series of hexaphenylbenzene (HPB)‐based deep blue‐emissive metallacages via multicomponent coordination‐driven self‐assembly. These metallacages feature prismatic structures with HPB derivatives as the faces and tetracarboxylic ligands as the pillars, as evidenced by NMR, mass spectrometry and X‐ray diffraction analysis. Light‐harvesting systems were further constructed by employing the metallacages as the donor and a naphthalimide derivative (NAP) as the acceptor, owing to their good spectral overlap. The judiciously chosen metallacage serves as the antenna, providing the suitable energy to excite the non‐emissive NAP, and thus resulting in bright emission for NAP in the solid state. This study provides a type of HPB‐based multicomponent emissive metallacage and explores their applications as energy donors to light up non‐emissive fluorophores in the solid state, which will advance the development of emissive metallacages as useful luminescent materials.