Fluxionalidade estrutural em complexos contendo íons terras raras com ligante β-dicetonato : uma abordagem teórico-experimental

Abstract

Complexes with lanthanide ions have been extensively studied due to their applications as luminescent and/or magnetic materials and for imaging and diagnostics, both as in crystalline form or thin films, glass or polymer matrices, and in solution. Applications involving their luminescent properties has been highlighted due to the fact that these compounds present high quantum efficiency, high emission intensity, good chemical and thermal stabilities, and emission spectra with narrow lines, making possible its use in various technology areas, such as photonics, displays, biological assays, sensors, catalysts etc. Recently, an increasing number of experimental works based on chemical shift data – NMR in solution have been reported in the literature and suggest fluxional structures in a wide variety of coordination compounds containing rare earth ions. Although fluxional behavior of lanthanides complexes is already known and studied for many years, the description of fluxionality mechanisms for these compounds is not yet established. There are no experimental and/or computational systematic studies in the literature elucidating such mechanisms. Also, the fact that the time scale of NMR measurements is in the same order of magnitude of the emitting states of Ln3+ lifetimes suggests that the determination of the fluxional mechanisms may assist in understanding quenching of luminescence of lanthanide compounds in solution, and may explain the lower quantum yield in solution than in the solid state. Another important question which remains open is, in view of the above mentioned results, which structure should be used in modeling luminescent properties. -diketonate coordination compounds with lanthanide ions have important applications mainly as luminescent probes. Thus, their structures in crystal and solution are relevant, and the use of the lanthanide induced shift (LIS) NMR measurements can provide structural information about these complexes as well as biomolecules in solution. The [Eu(BTFA)3BIPY] complex, where BTFA = 4,4,4-trifluoro-1-phenyl-1,3-butanedionate and BIPY = 2,2’-bipiridyl, has a well-defined X-ray crystallographic structure and its 1H NMR signals have been unambiguous assigned and used to yield structural differences between crystalline and solution phases. Motivated by these findings, we investigated a series of lanthanide-based coordination compounds of the type [Ln(BTFA)3L], where Ln3+ = Eu3+ or Yb3+, [Y(BTFA)3L] and L = BIPY or PHEN (PHEN =1,10-phenanthroline) in the theoretical-experimental point of view (synthesis, characterization, NMR measurements and computational calculations) aiming determine the relevant factors in the structure of the compounds that favor or not fluxional behavior and also investigate the relationship of that behavior to the quenching of luminescence in solution. Measurements of the 1H NMR signals at variable temperature in CD2Cl2 of the [Ln(BTFA)3L] complexes suggest that these compounds have a fluxional structure, because the crystal structure has the hydrogen atoms of non-equivalent btfa ligands, while the time scale on which are performed by measures of NMR at room temperature, all of the hydrogen atoms btfa ligands are equivalent, as well as for the hydrogen atoms of the bipy or phen ligand. For the [Eu(BTFA)3BIPY] complex, the broadening of the signals also suggests that the structure is starting to become rigid at this temperature, and should, at lower temperatures, show the asymmetry observed in the crystal. This behavior indicates that this complex has a fluxional structure. The structure of the complexes have been calculated with the hybrid DFT functional PBE0, using MWBX/6-31+G(O,N)/6-31G(F,C,H) and yielded results in very good agreement with the crystallographic data. Based on NMR data was proposed that it may provide a fluxional structure in solution. In fact, for the [Eu(BTFA)3BIPY] complex, the energy difference obtained between the structures are small, however, the barrier to structural interconversion through via dissociative was found to be quite high and could not explain the experimental observations. Thus, a mechanism of pseudo-rotation of ligands was proposed and the activation barrier was calculated for the rotation of btfa and bipy ligands. The computational results showed that the structure is highly fluxional, agreeing with the results obtained by chemical shift – NMR measurements as well as to the very small coalescence temperature, although there is an increase in the activation barrier along the lanthanide series (due to the decrease of the ionic radius and consequent increase of the steric effect). TD-DFT calculations show that different conformations of the complex [Eu(BTFA)3PHEN] alter the position of the states involved in the transfer of energy to the ion, which can lead to the change of the mechanisms of energy transfers that lead to luminescence. These results can aid in the rational design of more luminescent compounds and more efficient devices.