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Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:

Chemical compounds that emit light are used in a variety of different materials, from glow-in-the-dark children's toys to LED lights to light-emitting sensors. As the demand for these compounds increases, finding new efficient methods for their production is essential.

[...] Researchers, led by Prof. Julia Khusnutdinova, designed compounds whose photoluminescence depended on weak interactions between atoms within the single compound molecule itself. As a result, they obtained the tunability of the aggregation-based system confined to a single molecule, without the need for intermolecular aggregation.

[...] "We found that we could change the color produced by the compound based on what other groups of atoms were bound to the ligand," illuminates Filonenko. "Larger groups would cause the rings to move closer together, shifting the color to the orange-yellow range, while smaller substituents would make the rings move apart, turning the emission color red. The ability to tune the wavelength of light emitted from these molecules provides a huge advantage over the traditional metal-ligand PL complexes".

The tunability and controllability of these complexes makes them an attractive candidate for many applications. "We see a high potential for these compounds to be used as sensors due to their very high sensitivity to the surrounding environment," revealed Filonenko.

-- submitted from IRC

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