Transition metal complexes meet the rylenes.

This Perspective highlights an emerging area of metal-organic chromophore science related to the photochemistry and photophysics of coordination compounds and organometallic structures covalently tethered to rylene (naphthalene-cored) imide and diimide scaffolds. This combination of molecules renders highly colourful structures producing an array of excited state behaviour and in some instances strongly aggregated self-assembled metal-organic architectures.