Substituent-Directed Assembly of 1D and 2D Silver Aryl Tellurolates with Tunable Emission

Abstract

Metal-organic chalcogenolates (MOChas) are hybrid materials notable for excellent air and water stability and strong light-matter interactions. Tellurium-based MOChas have been limited to only a single example, tethrene (AgTePh). We modified a Grignard-based synthetic approach to prepare bis(4-methoxyphenyl) ditelluride and bis(3-methoxyphenyl) ditelluride, then prepared the corresponding MOChas. We used synchrotron serial crystallography at the Diamond Light Source, merging 90-degree sweeps from six selected microcrystals using "needle-in-a-haystack" approach to solve the crystal structure of AgTe-4M, revealing the tethrene-like 2-dimensional layered system. We also identified a bright red luminescent AgTe-3M derivative that is consistent with a 1-dimensional system. In parallel, we observed that elemental tellurium is a problematic contaminant that negatively impacts crystal morphology and yield when present during the synthesis. We demonstrate that inclusion of elemental tellurium is generally tolerated when <1% by weight.