Two lanthanide-hydroxo clusters with different nuclearity: Synthesis, structures, luminescent and magnetic properties

Abstract

Under the identical reaction conditions, two new TbIII and SmIII-hydroxo clusters with different nuclearity have been prepared and characterized by X-ray crystallography, spectroscopic methods and magnetic measurements. Solid-state structure analyses reveal that the TbIII cluster shows a pentanuclear square pyramidal shape of the composition [Tb5(μ3-OH)4(μ4-OH)(dbm)10]·2H2O (1, dbm– = dibenzoylmethanate) with the dbm ligands presenting two types of coordination modes [η2-and (μ-O)-η2-]. The SmIII species presents a tetranuclear parallelogram structure formulated as [Sm4(μ3-OH)2(dbm)10]·12H2O (2), and three types of coordination modes [η2-, (μ-O)-η2- and (μ-O)2-η2-] for dbm ligands are observed. The measurements of magnetic properties indicate that the direct-current (dc) magnetic behaviors of two clusters mainly result from the thermal depopulation of the Stark sublevels of the TbIII and SmIII ions, respectively. Meanwhile, alternating current (ac) magnetic susceptibility of 1 is also assessed. Investigations on luminescence properties show that 2 displays characteristic emission of the SmIII ion in visible range, while 1 does not exhibit any detectable emission. The interpretations of different emission behaviors for 1 and 2 are also presented in detail.