Photophysical studies of 1D and 2D Au(I)-thiolate coordination polymers

SSCI-VIDE+CDFA+OVE:ADMInternational audienceHybrid Au(I) compounds exhibit a large domain of applications such as electronic devices, contrast agents, sensors or photocatalysts and are well known for their diverse photophysical properties, often implied by the aurophilic interactions1. Among them, gold(I) thiolates are an important class of materials, due to the strong soft-soft interaction between Au(I) and thiolates, and their potential to form self-assembled monolayers, functionalized nanoparticles and coordination oligomers or polymers. However, despite their great interest, the neutral Au(I)-thiolate coordination polymers remain underinvestigated. Thus, a little is known about their structure2 and the origin of their photophysical properties.Here, we report the first structures of coordination polymers of gold(I) and ortho-, meta-, para mercaptobenzoic acids. We will show how change of the position of substituent influences the structure formation giving 1D or 2D extended networks. Hence, each of these compounds exhibit distinct photophysical properties such as thermoluminochromism, thermally activated delayed fluorescence (TADF) or high quantum yield (Fig. 1), pointing out the high potential of gold-thiolate coordination polymers as temperature sensing or optoelectronic devices.31. H. Schmidbaur, A. Schier, Chem. Soc. Rev., 2012, 41, 370.2. O. Veselska, A. Demessence, Coord. Chem. Rev., 2018, 355, 240.3. O. Veselska, L. Okhrimenko, N. Guillou, D. Podbevšek, G. Ledoux, C. Dujardin, M. Monge, D. Chevrier, R. Yang, P. Zhang, A. Fateeva, A. Demessence, J. Mater. Chem. C., 2017, 5, 9843