Conspectus
Designing
bright and efficient near-infrared (NIR) emitters has
drawn much attention due to numerous applications ranging from biological
imaging, medical therapy, optical communication, and night-vision
devices. However, polyatomic organic and organometallic molecules
with energy gaps close to the deep red and NIR regime are subject
to dominant nonradiative internal conversion (IC) processes, which
drastically reduces the emission intensity and exciton diffusion length
of organic materials and hence hampers the optoelectronic performances.
To suppress nonradiative IC rates, we suggested two complementary
approaches to solve the issues: exciton delocalization and molecular
deuteration. First, exciton delocalization efficiently suppresses
the molecular reorganization energy through partitioning to all aggregated
molecules. According to the IC theory together with the effect of
exciton delocalization, the simulated nonradiative rates with the
energy gap ΔE = 104 cm–1 decrease by around 104 fold when the exciton delocalization
length equals 5 (promoting vibronic frequency ω
l
= 1500 cm–1). Second,
molecular deuterations reduce Franck–Condon vibrational overlaps
and vibrational frequencies of promoting modes, which decreases IC
rates by 1 order of magnitude in comparison to the rates of nondeuterated
molecules under ΔE of 104 cm–1. Although deuteration of molecules has long been
attempted to increase emission intensity, the results have been mixed.
Here, we provide a robust derivation of the IC theory to demonstrate
its validity, especially to emission in the NIR region.
The
concepts are experimentally verified by the strategic design
and synthesis of a class of square-planar Pt(II) complexes, which
form crystalline aggregates in vapor deposited thin films. The packing
geometries are well characterized by the grazing angle X-ray diffraction
(GIXD), showing domino-like packing arrangements with the short ππ
separation of 3.4–3.7 Å. Upon photoexcitation, such closely
packed assemblies exhibit intense NIR emission maximized in the 740–970
nm region through metal–metal-to-ligand charge transfer (MMLCT)
transition with unprecedented photoluminescent quantum yield (PLQY)
of 8–82%. To validate the existence of exciton delocalization,
we applied time-resolved step-scan Fourier transform UV–vis
spectroscopy to probe the exciton delocalization length of Pt(II)
aggregates, which is 5–9 molecules (2.1–4.5 nm) assuming
that excitons mainly delocalized along the direction of ππ
stacking. According to the dependence of delocalization length vs
simulated IC rates, we verify that the observed delocalization lengths
contribute to the high NIR PLQY of the aggregated Pt(II) complexes.
To probe the isotope effect, both partially and completely deuterated
Pt(II) complexes were synthesized. For the case of the 970 nm Pt(II)
emitter, the vapor deposited films of per-deuterated Pt(II) complexes
exhibit the same emission peak as that of the nondeuterated one, whereas
PLQY increases ∼50%. To put the fundamental studies into practi...