1,10-Phenanthrolines: versatile building blocks for luminescent molecules, materials and metal complexes

1,10-phenanthroline entails several appealing structural and chemical properties: rigidity, planarity, aromaticity, basicity, chelating capability. This makes it a versatile starting material for synthetic organic, inorganic and supramolecular chemistry. In this tutorial review we examine how the chemical versatility of pristine 1,10-phenanthroline, a weakly fluorescent molecule, has been exploited to design many UV-Vis-NIR luminescent organic derivatives and coordination compounds with transition-metal (Ru(ii), Os(ii), Rh(iii), Cr(iii), Pt(ii), Zn(ii), Cu(i), Ag(i)) and rare-earth (Eu(iii),Tb(iii), Yb(iii), Nd(iii), Er(iii)) cations. They are utilized for many analytical and technological applications.