Investigation on monolayers and Langmuir–Blodgett films of atypical amphiphilic terbium complexes

Abstract

The terbium complexes studied in this paper can be expressed by the formula TbL 3Phen, where Tb denotes the central ion Tb(III), L denotes the β-diketone ligand acac (acetylacetone), TFA (trifluoroacetylacetone), HFA (hexafluoroacetylacetone) and TTA (thenoyltrifluoroacetone), respectively, and Phen denotes the synergistic ligand 1,10-phenanthroline. The key to obtaining the high-quality atypical amphiphilic complex Langmuir–Blodgett (LB films) lies in using a kind of composite subphase, which prohibits the dissolution and dissociation of the complexes in the monolayer at the air/liquid interface. The X-ray diffraction result indicates that the LB films have a good periodic layered structure. The UV-Vis spectrum result shows that the terbium complexes are homogeneously fabricated into LB films layer-by-layer. More than one peak appeared in both the fluorescence excitation spectra and the fluorescence emission spectra of all terbium complex LB films. In the fluorescence emission spectra, the peak at the wavelength of 545.0 nm (green light) was the most intense. The fluorescence of the terbium complex LB film can be modulated by changing the excitation wavelength.