Mithrene Is a Self-Assembling Robustly Blue Luminescent Metal–Organic Chalcogenolate Assembly for 2D Optoelectronic Applications

Abstract

Crystalline metal–organic chalcogenolate assemblies are a class of semiconducting hybrid nanomaterials that consist of well-defined arrays of nanostructured inorganic coordination polymers with a supramolecular lattice of organic ligands. Growing crystals of periodic arrays of nanostructured hybrid chalcogenolates at biphasic liquid–liquid interfaces has been used to prepare semiconducting hybrid materials for potential applications in sensing, catalysis, mechanochemistry, organic light-emitting devices, and photovoltaics. However, a distinct lack of a systematic framework for quantifying the relationship between experimental parameters and the structure–function relationship of the prepared materials has been one of the largest hurdles for the emerging field of hybrid chalcogenolates and related hybrid coordination polymer systems. Here we examine the crystallization of silver benzeneselenolate, coined here as mithrene, at a toluene–water interface and demonstrate that silver ion concentration is the cri...