Recent advances in photofunctional guest/layered double hydroxide host composite systems and their applications: experimental and theoretical perspectives

Incorporation of organic photofunctional guests into host matrices has attracted considerable interest as a means of achieving controllable luminescence and other photofunctional properties for application in the next generation of light-emitting materials and sensors. In this article, recent advances in the field of photoactive guest/layered double hydroxide (LDH) host composite systems and their prospective applications are reviewed. Firstly, several chromophore/LDH solid-state powdered materials with attractive photophysical properties are introduced. Attention is then focused on ordered photoemissive LDH-based thin films, and their polarized luminescence properties and stimuli-responsive behavior as sensors. Finally, we briefly review theoretical investigations of the geometric and electronic structure of the photofunctional guest/LDH host supramolecular architecture employing molecular dynamics simulations and periodic density functional calculations.