Aggregation Effect on the Luminescence Properties of Phenylbipyridine Pt(II) Acetylide Complexes. A Theoretical Prediction with Experimental Evidence

We report a combined theoretical and experimental study of both the structural and optical properties of phosphorescent cyclometalated square-planar (phenylbipyridyl)-platinum(II) acetylide complexes, namely (Pt(tBu(2)-(C) over cap(N) over capN)(C C-Ph)] and (Pt(hex(2)-(C) over cap(N) over capN)(C C-thienyl)] that exhibit, at high concentrations, an additional emission band at longer wavelength. The geometry optimizations of both the ground and the lowest triplet excited states of the considered monomers and different possible dimers have been performed in solution using several density functional theory (DFT) functionals corrected for dispersion effects. For the dimers, which are shown to exhibit a head-to-tail configuration, a significant shortening of the Pt center dot center dot center dot Pt distance, compared to that in the ground state, is observed in the first triplet state. Moreover, we show that trimeric species are highly improbable in solution. The UV-visible absorption spectra of the complexes are well rationalized using a vertical time-dependent DFT (TD-DFT) protocol relying on a global hybrid exchange correlation functional. Finally, the new emission band at high concentration of the complexes can be assigned to a metal metal to ligand charge transfer excited state ((MMLCT)-M-3).