Abstract
The strategy of aggregation-induced emission enhancement (AIEE) has been proven to be efficient in wide areas and has recently been adopted in the field of metal nanoclusters. However, the relationship between atomically precise clusters and AIEE is still unclear. Herein, we have successfully obtained two few-atom heterometallic gold-silver hepta-/decanuclear clusters, denoted Au6Ag and Au9Ag, and determined their structures by X-ray diffraction and mass spectrometry. The nature of the AuI⋯AgI interactions thereof is demonstrated through energy decomposition analysis to be far-beyond typical closed-shell metal-metal interaction dominated by dispersion interaction. Furthermore, a positive correlation has been established between the particle size of the nanoaggregates and the photoluminescence quantum yield for Au6Ag, manifesting AIEE control upon varying the stoichiometric ratio of Au : Ag in atomically-precise clusters.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Pages (from-to) | 702-708 |
| Number of pages | 7 |
| Journal | Chemical Science |
| Volume | 12 |
| Issue number | 2 |
| DOIs | |
| State | Published - Jan 14 2021 |
Funding
This work was nancially supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (No. 21731002, 21975104, and 21801095), the Guangdong Major Project of Basic and Applied Research (2019B030302009), the China Postdoctoral Science Foundation (2017M622894) and Jinan University. MAO acknowledges supporting aspects of his group's contributions by the Welch Foundation (Grant B-1542), U.S. National Science Foundation (CHE-1413641), and the Shenzhen/China Peacock Plan (No. 1208040050847074). We appreciate Dr Xue Li and Xue-Zhi Wang (JNU) for the help with the mass spectrometry studies, and Dr Vladimir Nesterov (UNT) for the help with the crystallography studies.