Dramatic improvement in photostability of luminescent Eu(III) complexes with tetraphenylimidodiphosphinate ligand

In this paper, we synthesized and characterized a new Eu(III) tetraphenylimidodiphosphinate complex with dimethyl sulfoxide (DMSO) as co-ligand. Moreover, we compared the photostability of a series of Eu(III) complexes containing tetraphenylimidodiphosphinate ligands, Eu(tpip)3, Eu(tpip)3Phen, Eu(tpip)3DMSO, with their analogs of 1,3-dibenzoylmethanate, Eu(dbm)3∙2H2O, Eu(dbm)3Phen, Eu(dbm)3(DMSO)2. We found that the photostability of the luminescent Eu(III) complexes was significantly improved upon substitution of the 1,3-diketones with tetraphenylimidodiphosphinate ligands.