Novel hybrid luminescent materials derived from multicarboxy cage silsesquioxanes and terbium ion

Abstract

Multicarboxy (8, 16) functionalized cage silsesquioxanes were synthesized through the photochemical thiol-ene reaction of octavinylsilsesquioxane with 3-mercaptopropionic acid and mercaptosuccinic acid, respectively. These two cage precursors acted as ligands to coordinate with terbium ion (Tb³⁺) to obtain two novel hybrid luminescent materials, which exhibited fine luminescent properties and good thermal stabilities. Their morphologies were investigated by XRD, SAXS, SEM, TEM and DLS. And the results showed that self-assembly particle size of the hybrid complex with octacarboxyl cage was larger size than that of cage with 16 carboxyl groups.