The effect of CH and CD quenching on the luminescence lifetime of Er(3+) Nd(3+) and Yb(3+) in the Cs[Ln(HFA)(4)] system has been quantified, and we have shown that for Er(3+) ions the quenching is dominated by the nearest neighbor CH oscillators, whereas for Nd(3+) ions the roles of more distant CH oscillators and nearest neighbor CD oscillators are important.

The authors have quantified the quenching of the luminescence lifetime of Er 3+ ions in organic complexes due to the presence of CH vibrational oscillators as a function of their distance from the ion. They have shown that any hydrogen atoms within a sphere of at least 20 Å from an erbium ion will cause sufficient quenching to prohibit its use in telecommunications applications.

Photoluminescence lifetime measurements of the erbium decay in samples of erbium(III) bis(perfluoro-p-tolyl)phosphinate, Er[(p-CF3C6F4)2PO2]3, as a function of erbium concentration have been made. It has been found that for concentrations greater than 50%, the lifetime could be fitted with a stretched exponential function, which is indicative of erbium-erbium energy migration to quenching sites, most likely at the surface of the finely divided powder. At concentrations below 50%, the decay was single exponential with a maximum lifetime of ∼700μs.

New Yb(III) complexes based on the pentachlorotropolonate (pctrop) ligand show enhanced infrared emission when excited in the orange organic chromophore. Yb(pctrop)(3)(DMF-d(7))(2) presents the highest reported quantum yield for a nonfluorinated infrared-emitting organolanthanide complex.

There is an error in the calculation of the average luminescence lifetime, s h i, using the experimentally determined values s = 237 ls and b = 0.7 in the equation for s h i presented on page S432. The correct value is s h i = 0.30 ms. We are grateful to Professor J.-C. Bünzli for informing us of our error. Figure 3 inadvertently showed the photoluminescence emission spectrum of [(C 6 F 5 ) 2 PO 2 ] 3 Er (5). The correct version of Fig. 3, showing the spectrum of [(C 6 H 5 ) 2 PO 2 ] 3 Er (6), is given below.