Luminescent materials of covalent grafting lanthanide complexes to the synthetic clays

Lanthanide complex-based luminescent organic-inorganic hybrid materials are highly interesting for a broad range of application fields. The combination of lanthanide complexes with the synthetic clay, Laponite, is now attracting the interest of scientists due to the unique features of the synthetic clay. However, most of the reported literature are involved with the adsorption of lanthanide complexes on the clay particles. Taking the covalent incorporation of lanthanide complex into clay and satisfying the further coordinate with central lanthanide ion into account, herein, we reported a facile strategy of covalent grafting lanthanide complexes to the clay via the reaction of the terminal triethoxy groups of triethoxysilylated ligand (phenSi) and the surface OH groups of the clay. The successful grafting of the complexes was confirmed by the FT-IR spectra, Si-29 solid-state NMR spectra and the luminescent data. And the nitrogen atoms of Phen moieties which are covalently grafted to the clay provide the chance to prepare luminescent hybrid materials with larger coordination number.