Abstract
Recently, metal nanoclusters (MNCs) emerged as a new class of luminescent materials and have attracted tremendous interest in the area of luminescence-related applications due to their excellent luminous properties (good photostability, large Stokes shift) and inherent good biocompatibility. However, the origin of photoluminescence (PL) of MNCs is still not fully understood, which has limited their practical application. In this mini-review, focusing on the origin of the photoemission emission of MNCs, we simply review the evolution of luminescent mechanism models of MNCs, from the pure metal-centered quantum confinement mechanics to ligand-centered p band intermediate state (PBIS) model via a transitional ligand-to-metal charge transfer (LMCT or LMMCT) mechanism as a compromise model.
Highlights
Metal nanoclusters (Au, Ag, Pt, Cu) are a new class of attractive materials owing to their enhanced quantum confinement effect, which endows them with unusual optical and electronic properties [1,2,3,4,5,6]
To one’s surprise, they all exhibited completely the same emission at approximately 610 nm [56], components of metal nanoclusters (MNCs) including the nature of coordinate ligands, valence states of surface metal which is completely contradictory to the explanation of the classical quantum confinement effect should (QCE) mechanism
AuNCs were well-separated by the cavity of the dendrimer, and the luminescence can be ascribed to were well-separated by the cavity of the dendrimer, and the luminescence can be ascribed to the the ligand-to-metal charge transfer (LMCT) effect, rather than the ligand-to-metal−metal charge transfer (LMMCT) effect [26]
Summary
Metal nanoclusters (Au, Ag, Pt, Cu) are a new class of attractive materials owing to their enhanced quantum confinement effect, which endows them with unusual optical and electronic properties [1,2,3,4,5,6]. Luminescent MNCs exhibit outstanding optical properties including a large Stokes shift (generally large than 100 nm), large two-photon absorption cross-section, good photostability, good biocompatibility, and the emission wavelength could be adjusted by controlling their size and surface ligands, which are not present in conventional organic dyes [1,9,11,21]. Their excellent luminous performance is attractive for the applications in biomedicine, since it provides avenues for designing optical sensors, biolabeling, bioimaging, photosensitizers, and light-emitting devices. We proposed some forward-looking perspectives to the future developments of MNCs, in particular, for the application of MNCs in the nanocatalysis science
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