Photophysical properties of a series of high luminescent europium complexes with fluorinated ligands

A series of high luminescent europium complexes have been synthesized, such as Eu(TFNB)3phen (1), Eu(PFNP)3phen (2), Eu(HFNH)3phen (3) and Eu(PFND)3phen (4), which have β-diketone ligands containing fluorinated alkyl chains with different lengths and conjugated naphthyl groups, i.e., 4,4,4-trifluoro-1-(2-naphthyl)butane-1,3-dione (TFNB); 4,4,5,5,5-pentafluoro-1-(2-naphthyl)pentane-1,3-dione (PFNP); 4,4,5,5,6,6,6-heptafluoro-1-(2-naphthyl)hexane-1,3-dione (HFNH) and 4,4,5,5,6,6,7,7,8,8,9,9,10,10,10-pentadecafluoro-1-(2-naphthyl)decane-1,3-dione (PFND). And 10-phenanthroline (phen) is coordinated as the neutral second ligand in 1–4. The crystal structures of 1 and 2 have been studied, which are typical and similar to that of 3. The results of TGA–DTA suggest that these Eu complexes have good thermal stabilities. By means of absorption and (time resolved) emission spectroscopy including determination of luminescence quantum yields, energy transfer dynamics and so on, the following results have been obtained: first, these Eu complexes show characteristic pure red color photoluminescence emission with high quantum efficiencies from the central Eu3+ ions through the excitation of the ligands; secondly, photophysical properties of 1, 2, 3 and 4, especially the lifetimes of excited states 5D0 of Eu3+ ions and quantum efficiencies are influenced by the different lengths of fluorinated alkyl chains, though the singlets (S1) and triplets (T1) of the fluorinated ligands are almost the same.