DESIGN, SYNTHESIS AND APPLICATION OF VISIBLE AND NEAR INFRARED LUMINESCENT LANTHANIDE COMPLEXES: FROM SMALL MOLECULES TO MACROMOLECULES

Luminescent lanthanide complexes have great potential for practical applications such as fluoroimmunoassay, polymer-based optical signal amplifiers, active materials in lasers and bio-imaging. Interest in the lanthanide cations as luminescent probes stems from their unique photophysical properties such as sharp emission bands, photostability and long luminescence lifetimes. In order to generate a sufficient number of photons allowing sensitive detection, lanthanide cations must be sensitized with suitable antennae that possess the appropriate electronic structure and that can sufficiently protect the cation from high energy vibrations to prevent the non-radiative deactivation of the lanthanide luminescence. In this thesis, it has been demonstrated that a series of salophen derivatives can be used as an efficient sensitizer for near-infrared emitting lanthanide cations, and derivatives of naphthalimide-attached polyamidoamine (PAMAM) dendrimers can be used as suitable ligands for visible and near infrared emitting lanthanide cations. These systems fulfill the requirements for lanthanide luminescence by forming stable coordination with lanthanide cations, protecting lanthanide cations from non-radiative deactivation and having suitable energy levels for efficient energy transfer to specific lanthanide cations. By introducing functional groups on the surface of dendrimer complex, the physical and photophysical properties of the complex can be controlled. It has been demonstrated that the versatility of dendrimer-lanthanide complexes as backbones for a broad variety of applications