Synthesis, characterization and theoretical analysis on a oxygen-sensing phosphorescent copper(I) complex.

In this paper, we report the synthesis, crystal structure, photophysical properties, and electronic nature of a phosphorescent Cu(I) complex of [Cu(Phen-Ph)(PPh(3))(2)]BF(4), where Phen-Ph and PPh(3) stand for 2-phenyl-1H-imidazo[4,5-f][1,10]phenanthroline and triphenylphosphine, respectively. [Cu(Phen-Ph)(PPh(3))(2)]BF(4) renders a yellow phosphorescence peaking at 553 nm, with a long excited state lifetime of 13.2 μs under N(2) atmosphere. Density functional calculation reveals that the emission comes from a triplet metal-to-ligand-charge-transfer excited state. We electrospun composite nanofibers of [Cu(Phen-Ph)(PPh(3))(2)]BF(4) and polystyrene (PS), hoping to explore the possibility of using the composite nanofibers as an oxygen sensing material. The finally obtained samples with average diameter of ∼400 nm exhibit a maximum sensitivity of 6.52 towards molecular oxygen with short response time of 15 s due to the large surface-area-to-volume ratio of nanofibrous membranes. No photobleaching is detected in these samples.