Organometallic Platinum(II) Photosensitisers that Demonstrate Ligand-Modulated Triplet-Triplet Annihilation Energy Upconversion Efficiencies.

A series of 2-phenylquinoxaline ligands have been synthesised that introduce either CF or OCF electron-withdrawing groups at different positions of the phenyl ring. These ligands were investigated as cyclometalating reagents for platinum(II) to give neutral complexes of the form \[PtC^N(acac)\] in which C^N=cyclometalating ligand; acac=acetyl acetonate. X-ray crystallographic studies on three examples showed that the complexes adopt an approximate square planar geometry. All examples revealed strong Pt-Pt linear contacts of 3.2041(6), 3.2199(3) and 3.2586(2) Å. The highly coloured complexes display efficient visible absorption at 400-500 nm (ϵ ≈5000 M cm ) and orange red photoluminescent characteristics λ =603-620 nm; Φ ≤37 %, which were subtly tuned by the ligand. Triplet emitting character was confirmed by microsecond luminescence lifetimes and the photogeneration of singlet oxygen with quantum efficiencies up to 57 %. Each complex was investigated as a photosensitiser for triplet-triplet annihilation energy upconversion using 9,10-diphenylanthracene as the annihilator species: a range of good upconversion efficiencies (Φ 5.9-14.1 %) were observed and shown to be strongly influenced by the ligand structure in each case.