Regulating Room Temperature Phosphorescence in Hybrid Metal Phosphate and Phosphite through Configuration Control of Flexible Triimidazole Luminophore

Room temperature phosphorescence (RTP) materials exhibit useful applications in display, information encryption, bioimaging sectors, etc. Recent studies have demonstrated that the configuration of organic luminophores has an apparent influence on the resultant luminescent performance of corresponding products. The crystalline nature, together with the coordinate interaction between inorganic metal ions and organic ligands, provides extra freedom to modulate the configuration of organic constituents to optimize the RTP performance of the analogues. It has been proven that anchoring polydentate N/O-ligands into metal phosphites and phosphates (MPOs) provides feasibility to generate hybrid MPOs with diverse luminescent functionality. Considering the structural stability and bonding similarity of phosphite and phosphate, herein, two hybrid MPOs, [Zn3(HPO3)3(titmb)]·2H2O (1) and [Zn3(HPO4)3(titmb)] (2), were available via coordinate anchoring a flexible organic luminophore, 1,3,5-tris(imidazol-1-ylmethyl)-2,4,6-trimethylbenzene (titmb), into an inorganic MPO system. They feature a similar neutral inorganic layer as subunits, which are further decorated by organic titmb. Due to the restriction of molecular vibrations/rotations and inhibition of nonradiative transition, the final hybrid MPOs exhibit RTP performance with tunable triplet energy driven by a distinct configuration of flexible titmb. Our work provides new insights into the design of RTP materials through configuration control of organic luminophores under the guidance of a coordinate anchoring strategy.