2.2. Synthesis of Compounds
Compound 1: A mixture of CzIP (15 mg, 0.065 mmol), D-cyclopentylglycine (15 mg, 0.10 mmol) and Zn(NO3)2·6H2O (60 mg, 0.20 mmol) were dissolved in H2O and DMI (DMI = 1,3-Dimethyl-2-imidazolidinone) (8 and 2 mL), the mixture were sealed in a Teflon-lined stainless steel container and heated at 150 °C for 3 days, and then cooled to room temperature. Colorless prismatic crystals were obtained and collected by filtration. Anal. calcd (%) for C20H11NO4Zn: C 60.80, H 2.79, N 3.55. Found (%): C 60.41, H 2.81, N 3.50.
Compound 2: CzIP (15 mg, 0.065 mmol), D-cyclopentylglycine (15 mg, 0.10 mmol) and Cd(SO4)2·8H2O (50 mg, 0.06 mmol) were dissolved in H2O and DMI (DMI = 1,3-Dimethyl-2-imidazolidinone) (8 and 2 mL), the mixture were sealed in a Teflon-lined stainless steel container and heated at 150 °C for 3 days, and then cooled to room temperature. Colorless prismatic crystals were obtained and collected by filtration. The crystals were washed with N,N-dimethylformamide (DMF) for three times to remove the surface impurities. Anal. calcd (%) for C25H21CdN3O5: C 53.97, H 3.78, N 7.55. Found (%): C 54.11, H 3.80, N 7.59.
Compound 3: CzIP (15 mg, 0.065 mmol), D-cyclopentylglycine (15 mg, 0.1 mmol) and Cd(SO4)2·8H2O (50 mg, 0.06 mmol) were dissolved in H2O and ethanol (EtOH) (8 and 2 mL), the mixture were sealed in a Teflon-lined stainless steel container and heated at 150 °C for 3 days, and then cooled to room temperature. Colorless prismatic crystals were obtained and collected by filtration. The crystals were washed with DMF for three times to remove the surface impurities. Anal. calcd (%) for C40H26Cd2N2O10: C 52.20, H 2.83, N 3.05. Found (%): C 52.39, H 2.88, N 3.04.
2.4. Structures and Optical properties
Single-crystal data analysis reveals that compound 1 crystallizes in a monoclinic
P2/c space group. The asymmetric unit contains one Zn
2+ ions, one CzIP ligand and two terminal water molecules (Figure S1). Each CzIP molecule coordinates four Zn
2+ ions through the four oxygen atoms of two carboxylate groups via
μ4-
η1 :
η1 :
η1 :
η1 form. Zn
2+ ions connect CzIP molecule to form a two-dimensional (2D) layer, the layers further stack into a scaffold. Through carefully check the structure, the CzIP molecules only has one configuration in each layer (Figure S1c), the dihedral angle between the phenyl ring of the isophthalate and carbazole group is near 60°, and the carbazole groups stack a face-to face one-dimensional (1D) dimensional column with a centroid-centroid distance of 4.71 Å, and the shortest distance is 3.70 Å (
Figure 1a, 1c and S1). It should be noted that although the carbazole groups show the parallel alignment, there is a much larger slip with each other, the perpendicular overlap ratio is about 30.2%. Besides, the distances among carbazole fragments in adjacent layers range from 3.02 to 3.85 Å. As a results, compound 1 is a supramolecular structure through the packing of 2D layers, there exist multiple weak π‒π and C-H···π interactions (
Figure 1b, 1c),[
31] also indicating the carbazole units present the discrete dimer stacking.
Compound 2 also crystallizes in a monoclinic
P2/c space group. The asymmetric unit contains two Zn
2+ ions, two CzIP ligand and two terminal DMI molecules (Figure S2). Each CzIP molecule coordinates four Zn
2+ ions through the four oxygen atoms of two carboxylate groups. The isophthalates connect Zn
2+ ions to form a layer, the carbazole chromophores as terminal units were suspended on both sides of the layer (
Figure 2a). In compound 2, there is only one stack fashion of carbazoles in each layer, namely, it exhibits the head-to-tail parallel packing, like the ladder without overlap from the side view (
Figure 2c), and the nearest distance is about 3.40 Å. The distance of each carbazole fragments away from the adjacent carbazole molecules is 3.0 and 3.3 Å, respectively (
Figure 2b), through the calculation of MERCURY and PLATON program, there are no intramolecular and intermolecular hydrogen bonds, the interactions in compound 2 is mainly van der Waals interactions, while there are no abundant hydrogen bonds, largely suggesting that the carbazole fragments exhibit the monomer-type arrangement.
Compound 3 crystallizes in a triclinic
P-1 space group. As shown in Figure S4 the basic unit contains two Zn
2+ ions, Zn1 connects six oxygen atoms from one terminal water molecule and four CzIP ligands. Zn2 connects seven oxygen atoms from one terminal water molecule and four CzIP ligands. CzIP molecules have the same coordination mode, each CzIP coordinates three Zn
2+ ions with
μ3-
η1 :
η2 :
η2 form. Compound 3 was consisted of 1D chains via supramolecular interactions. The CzIP molecules adopt twist conformations between isophthalic acid and carbazoles, as a result, the carbazole groups from the neighboring chains nearly form the face-to-face arrangement. The space of two adjacent carbazoles ranges from 3.7 to 4.5 Å between interplanar centers, and two kinds of dimeric stacking of the carbazoles exist in compound 3, such as carbazole fragments are presented with orange and yellow skeleton (
Figure 3c and 3d) as well as the carbazole fragments with red and green skeleton in
Figure 3e and 3f, the overlap ratio is up to approximately 62.3 and 57.4 % from the top view. The discrete dimeric stacking foreshadowed the strength of aromatic stacking interactions and presented H-aggregation. [
40,
41,
42,
43]
The crystal purity and thermal stability of compounds 1-3 was investigated. The power XRD patterns of the as-synthesized crystal samples are consistent with those simulated from single-crystal data, indicating the high phase purity of the crystal samples (Figure S5-7). Meanwhile, the TGA of compounds 1-3 were carried out under air condition from 30 to 700 °C. Compound 1 showed a high stability only with a tiny weight loss of 3.9% upon heating up to 425 °C, which was attributed to the removal of the physiosorbed water and the surface solvent molecules. The further drastic weight drop suggests the decomposition of compound 1. Above 500 ºC, compound 1 experiments several exothermic processes as a consequence of the decomposition of the organic part, leading to ZnO as a final residue. The thermogravimetric analysis (TGA) showed compound 2 can maintain its framework to near 300 °C. A plateau in the TG curve from room temperature up to 300 ºC is observed. For compound 3, the weight loss was 6.23% in temperature range of 30-170 ºC, which is attributed the removel of surface water molecules and coordinated water molecules. Almost no weight loss was found for 3 until the collapse of the framework occurred at about 495 °C, the final residue is CdO powder. Totally, the weight loss behaviors of compounds 1-3 is in good line with their crystal structures. Compounds 1 and 3 exhibit the relatively compact stacking owning the stronger π‒π interactions, compared to the loose packing of compound 2.
The photophysical properties of compounds 1−3 were investigated under ambient conditions. Compounds 1 and 2 are colorless crystals under natural light. Compounds 1 and 2 show the blue-white light upon 365 nm UV irradiation, interestingly, the naked-aye afterglow could be observed from compound 1 and 2 after turning off the irradiation source at ambient conditions. Especially for compound 1, the multi-color afterglow can be observed lasting about 3.5 s, and the afterglow color was changed from orange to yellow green. Unexpectedly, compounds 3 featuring the compact face-to face π‒π arrangement of carbazole fragments displays the green emission, but no visible afterglow could be traced under different excitation wavelength. The prompt photoluminescence spectra of compound 1 exhibits two emission bands, with one in the blue light region and the other in the long-wavelength region ranged from 475 to 675 nm and possessing four peaks around 473, 500, 550 and 623 nm (
Figure 4a). The delayed spectra of compound 1 with the delayed time 0.1 or 0.5 ms has a near perfect matching with the long-wavelength regions of the prompt spectrum, indicating that compound 1 has phosphorescence property. Compound 2 also exhibit the similar fluorescence and phosphorescence dual emission to that of compound 1, the fluorescence emission has three peaks at 375, 415 and 435 nm, the phosphorescence emission centred at about 570 and 625 nm (
Figure 4b), respectively. While compound 3 emit green light with a maximum at 539 nm, the phosphorescence bands are obviously red shifted, leading to phosphorescence colors covering a large range from blue-green to orange-red. The time resolved PL spectra of compounds 1-3 were measured. The two emission bands of compound 1 at 547 and 599 nm exhibit ultralong lifetimes of 663.85 and 597.60 ms, as well as decay lifetimes of 188.34 and 50.90 ms at 570 and 610 nm for compound 2. For compound 3, the lifetimes are 16.6 and 7.14 ms monitored at 600 and 670 nm, which is far less than the lifetimes of compounds 1 and 2 (
Figure 4g-i). The phosphorescent quantum yields of compounds 1-3 are 15.73%, 11.31 and 1.65% at ambient conditions, respectively. Interestingly, based on the above results, it can find that the emission wavelength has a positive correlation with the overlap of carbazole fragments, compound 3 owing the largest overlap show the largest emission wavelength. However, no similar relationship between the overlap of carbazole fragments and the emission wavelength and afterglow lifetime of phosphorescence can be observed. It is worth mentioning that compound 3 has the compact π‧‧‧π stacking between carbazole chromophores, the phosphorescence wavelengths are red-shifted progressively compared to that of compounds 1 and 2, but it did not exhibit the strong phosphorescence with the relative longer lifetime. Notably, compounds 1 and 2 showed obvious changes of color evolution from orange to green after the stopping of irradiation, especially for compound 1, indicating these two compounds exhibit the time-dependent dynamic RTP.
Besides, the photoluminescent Commission International Ed’Eclairage (CIE) coordinates of compounds 1 and 2 were (0.33, 0.36) and (0.34, 0.33), respectively (
Figure 4d and 4e), showing the near pure white-light emission via fluorescence and phosphorescence dual emission. To the best of our knowledge, the single coordination polymer without the introduction of guest emitters showing white-light emission is rare. These results indicate that coordination-induced crystallization provides an efficient way to develop white light materials.
To understand the origin and mechanism of the multiple long-lived peaks of compounds 1-3, temperature-dependent prompt and delayed emission are performed from 77 to 300 K. As shown in
Figure 4f and S14, the emission intensity of compound 1 across the whole emission wavelength decreased gradually with the increasing temperature, even some emission peaks at long wavelength above 500 nm disappeared, confirmed that the long-lived emission peaks of compound 1 belongs to phosphorescence rather than thermally activated delayed fluorescence (TADF) [
44,
45]. The emission trace of compound 1 at 500 nm is very close to that of CzIP in the solution of chloroform at low temperature (Figure S17), suggesting the emission comes from the single molecule triplet state phosphorescence. The phosphorescence emission of these compounds has almost no change under the different excitation wavelengths, it can be reasonably speculated that the multiple emission did not be generated from different luminescent centers.[
46,
47] In addition, compared to the solid state UV-Vis absorption of organic ligand powder, UV–vis absorption spectra of compounds 1-3 exhibited largely red-shifted bands (Figure S18 and S19), which can be attributed to the intramolecular and intermolecular charge transfer. Therefore, the origination of multiple phosphorescence bands could be tentatively assignable as the intermolecular charge transfer and the aggregation-induced emission of molecular cluster.[
48,
49] In addition, compound 3 only has faint phosphorescence with a short lifetime, it is mainly because that the dense aggregation with strong π–π interactions enhanced triplet–triplet annihilation and extended exciton diffusion, resulting in exciton quenching and the red shift of phosphorescence emission, and the photoluminescent behaviors is closer to the emission characteristic of the excimer (
Figure 5a). [
50,
51] It should be pointed out that the phosphorescence property of compound 3 is different from the previous reported results, where the strong the π–π interactions can efficiently stable the excited triplet states, further prompt the generation of long-live room temperature phosphorescence. These results demonstrated that controlling the aggregate states of molecules can significantly modulate the singlet and triplet properties, further affect the phosphorescence performance.
Considering that the unique time dependent long-lived room temperature phosphorescence of compound 1, the multiple level anticounterfeiting was exploited. As shown in
Figure 5b, A trophy label was prepared by using sample 1 powder. A “trophy”-like hole was made in a piece of cardboard with a thickness of 1 mm. The hole was filled with the fine powder of compound 1. Under 365 nm irradiation, the pattern exhibited the blue white emission. The UV light was switched off, the pattern emitted an orange afterglow for about 0.5 s, then a yellow afterglow, followed by a green emission could be observed by the naked eye. Compared to common anti counterfeiting labels of the single afterglow materials, the tag generated by compound 1 is much more sophisticated, it is hard to be counterfeited, these results demonstrated the potential applications for multi-color display and anticounterfeiting.