Coordination-driven self-Assembly of multi-chromophoric architectures using photoactive building blocks

Coordination-driven self-Assembly is a synthetic method that uses metal-ligand bonding as the driving force for the formation of polynuclear metallacycles and cages. These discrete molecules may exhibit so-called emergent properties, wherein the proximity of building blocks results in novel electronic structure and related photophysical properties. Selfassembly reactions using iridium complexes as metal nodes and organic molecules as linkers generates a library of metallacycles and cages containing multiple chromophores. These architectures preserve the promising photochemistry of the monomeric Ir centers found at the nodes in the context of organic light-emitting diodes and non-linear optical applications such as reverse saturable absorption. The design and characterization of a small library of platinum and iridium assemblies is presented with an emphasis on understanding the differences between the properties of the independent building blocks and those of the assemblies.