growth reactions from continuing toward bulk metal chalcogenides by kinetic stabilization. [1] In most cases, phosphine ligands were used for this purpose, [2] sometimes being supported by additional organic substituents on the chalcogen atoms. [3] Ternary clusters have also been reported that include a second type of metal atoms, [4] which enables tuning of structural and physical features within the range of the respective binary compounds. [5] Diversity can be further enhanced by attachment of functional organic ligands to the metal atoms of the clusters for tailoring material properties for optoelectronics or solar cells. [6] Recently, our group has reported on the outstanding nonlinear optical properties of adamantane-type clusters with the general composition [(RT) 4 S 6 ] (R = organic substituent; T = Si, Ge, Sn). [7] We found that amorphous compounds with aromatic ligands transform infrared laser light into highly directional white light, while crystalline compounds or those with aliphatic ligands show strong second harmonic generation. Yet, the prerequisites for white-light generation are still under debate, and it is not clear whether the strong optical nonlinearities are an inherent molecular property or have their origin in the cluster habitus.To shed light onto this physical scenario, we combined the adamantane-type clusters with metal complexes. [8] This allowed
In order to gain more information on the white-light generation by amorphous molecular materials, the influence of metal complex substituents on the photophysical properties of potential white-light emitters is investigated. Three compounds of the general type [{(R 3 P) 3 MSn}{PhSn} 3 S 6 )], with R/M = Me/Au (1), Et/Ag (4), and Me/Cu (5), are produced by reactions of the organotin sulfide cluster [(PhSn) 4 S 6 ] (A) with the corresponding coinage metal complexes [M(PR 3 ) 3 Cl]. Excess of the gold complex in the reaction leads to rearrangement and formation of [Au(PMe 3 ) 4 ][Au(PMe 3 ) 2 ][(PhSnCl) 3 S 4 ] (2). The use of PMe 3 instead of PEt 3 in the reaction with the silver salt causes decomposition and affords [(Me 3 P) 3 AgSnCl 3 ](3). All compounds are structurally characterized, and the necessity of sterically stabilizing PEt 3 groups at the silver complex in 4 are rationalized by density functional theory (DFT) calculations. Measurements of the photophysical properties of 1, 4, and 5 show that the introduction of the metallo-ligands indeed affects the materials properties, and at the same time confirm that the reduction of the molecular symmetry alone is not a sufficient condition for white-light generation (WLG), which still requires amorphicity of the compound. This is realized for 1 and 4 in situ, while reabsorption processes inhibit WLG in case of the copper compound 5.