Aggregation induced phosphorescent N-oxyde-2,2′-bipyridine bismuth complexes and polymorphism-dependent emission

Abstract

Unprecedented bismuth complexes, based on the rarely used ditopic ligand N-oxide-2,2′-bipyridine (bp2mo), crystallizing as three polymorphs, α- (1), β- (2) and γ-[BiBr₃(bp2mo)₂] (3), exhibit phosphorescence with a quantum yield up to 17% for the crystal phase (1), while the complex displays a weak fluorescence in solution. A study of the luminescence properties combined with DFT/TDDFT calculations reveals that the lighting phenomenon originated by aggregation induced phosphorescence correlated with the weak intermolecular interactions present in the different crystal phases.