Xu Tingting, Wang Endong, Liu Shuai, Wei Zhezhen, Yin Peiqun, Sun Jianan, Xu Wen Wu, Song Yongbo
School of Basic Medical Sciences, Anhui Medical University, Hefei, 230032, China.
School of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering, Liaoning Normal University, Dalian 116029, China.
Dalton Trans. 2023 Dec 12;52(48):18442-18448. doi: 10.1039/d3dt02595k.
Elucidating the structure-property relationships of ultra-small metal nanocluster with basic nuclear is of great significance for understanding the evolution mechanism in both the structures and properties of polynuclear metal nanoclusters. In this study, an ultra-small copper hydride (CuH for short) nanocluster was simply synthesized with high yield, and the large-scale preparation was also achieved. Single crystal X-ray diffractometer (SC-XRD) analysis shows that this copper NC contains a tetrahedral Cu core co-capped by four PPhPy ligands and two Cl in which the existence of the central H atom in tetrahedron was further identified experimentally and theoretically. This CuH nanocluster exhibits bright yellow emission, which is proved to be the mixture of phosphorescence and fluorescence by the sensitivity of both emission intensity and lifetime to O. Furthermore, the temperature-dependent emission spectra and density functional theory (DFT) calculations suggest that the luminescence of CuH mainly originates from the metal-to-ligand charge transfer and cluster-centered triplet excited states. This work offers new insights into understanding the structure-property relationship of basic nuclear CuH nanocluster.
