Abstract Heterogeneous crystalline materials have recently attracted much attention, but their development is limited by the difficulty of efficient preparation, particularly solid-phase preparation. Here, a photosensitive silver(I) cluster crystal, Ag9(StBu)6(Hdpa)6·(PF6)3 (Ag9-Y), was obtained, which could change from colourless to red, accompanied by a change in photoluminescence (yellow to red) under UV irradiation. Further studies reveal that the intriguing transformation occurs due to the partial intercluster conversion (from Ag9 to Ag62) on the surface of the Ag9 crystal, resulting in the formation of heterogeneous core-shell crystals (Ag9-YR). Surprisingly, although this transformation causes a significant change in the photophysical properties, the host lattice does not change, and a multilayer heterogeneous crystal is successfully constructed (Ag9-YRY) by combination with the epitaxial growth method. This strategy of utilizing partial photosensitive cluster conversion to achieve differences in crystal zoning properties provides a new approach for constructing multifunctional heterogeneous crystalline materials with broad application prospects.
Huang et al. (Fri,) studied this question.