Tunable and white luminescence from mixed lanthanide with aza-macrocycles through multistimuli responses

Abstract

In this work, two aza-macrocycles (1 and 2) were designedly synthesized as hosts for sensitizing lanthanide luminescence in aqueous solution to explore new light emitting material. It is expected that macrocycle molecules can encapsulate lanthanide centers into their cavity to form new lanthanide fluorescent materials based on their excellent host–guest binding abilities. In addition, macrocycle molecules are blue emitters, so it will be possible to construct white light-emitting and color-tunable materials through the doping of both Tb3+ ions and Eu3+ ions into aza-macrocycle hosts with an appropriate molar ratio. All of experimental results verify that aza-macrocycle based lanthanide materials realized tunable luminescence and white light emissions through changing relative concentration (Tb/Eu = 1:0, 1:1, 1:2, 1:4, 1:6, 1:8, 0:1) of the constituent Ln3+ ions and the excitation wavelength from 351 nm to 395 nm. As far as we know, it is very rare that the color-tunable and white-light emission can be controlled by two types of strategies and on the basis of macrocycle hosts.