Bipyridyldicarboxamides and f-metals: the influence of electron effects on the structure, stability, separation, and photophysical properties of their complexes

In this work, three isomeric fluorinated bipyridyldicarboxamides were studied to evaluate the impact of the fluorine atom position on the structure, stability, Am(iii)/Ln(iii) separation, and photophysical properties of their complexes. The complexes of the fluorinated amides have a metal-to-ligand composition of 1 : 1, which is independent of the fluorine atom position or lanthanide metal. The bipyridyl fragments in the fluorinated complexes are flattened compared with those in unsubstituted ones. Ln-to-heteroatom distances are more affected by steric hindrance in the ligand and further by lanthanide ion radius contraction. This leads to significant effectivity of heavy lanthanide extraction compared with the light ones, particularly for 4F diamide. Fluorination leads to a slight variation in the excited triplet state of the complexes, and hence, the effectiveness of luminescence increases for Eu, Sm, and Tb complexes. Moreover, fluorination significantly affects the CIE chromaticity coordinates for the complexes. Even slight changes in the fluorinated bipyridine-derived diamide ligand structure, such as fluorine atom positioning, can substantially affect the properties of the metal complexes, with implications for selective extraction and luminescence.