Luminescence of neodymium(III) in organic media: Ligand designs for the remarkable luminescence and their evolution

The relatively low efficiency of Nd(III) emission in organic media has been improved by 1) suppression of the radiationless transition process via vibrational excitation of the surrounding medium, 2) prevention of dipole-dipole nonradiative energy transfer processes via energy migration, 3) suppression of radiationless transition of D2O molecules in the vicinity of Nd(III) complexes (formation of twelve-coordinate Nd(III) complex with DMSO-d(6)), 4) allowance of electron transitions of Nd(III) by the introduction of asymmetric ligand field, 5) photosensitization by use of energy transfer from organic ligands. The luminescence of Nd(III) was observed for the first time in undeuterated acetone when Nd(III) was complexed with bis-perfluorooctylsulfonylamine (pos). As to the applications of luminescent Nd(III) complexes, developments of luminescent lanthanide polymers and EL device were successful.