A V-Shaped 4-amino-1,8-napthalimide derived tetracarboxylic acid linker (L; bis-[N-(1,3-benzenedicarboxylic acid)]-9,18-methano-1,8-naphthalimide-[b,f][1,5]diazocine) comprising the Tröger's base (TB) structural motif was rationally designed and synthesised to access a nitrogen-rich fluorescent supramolecular coordination polymer. By adopting the straight forward precipitation method, a new luminescent nanoscale Zn(II) coordination polymer (TB-Zn-CP) was synthesized in quantitative yield using Zn(OAc)₂·2H₂O and tetraacid linker L (1 : 0.5) in DMF at room temperature. The phase-purity of as-synthesised TB-Zn-CP was confirmed by X-ray powder diffraction analysis, infra-red spectroscopy, and elemental analysis. Thermogravimetric analysis suggests that TB-Zn-CP is thermally stable up to 330 °C and the morphological features of TB-Zn-CP was analysed by SEM and AFM techniques. The N₂ adsorption isotherm of thermally activated TB-Zn-CP at 77 K revealed a type-II reversible adsorption isotherm and the calculated Brunauer–Emmett–Teller (BET) surface area was found to be 72 m² g⁻¹. Furthermore, TB-Zn-CP displayed an excellent CO₂ uptake capacity of 76 mg g⁻¹ at 273 K and good adsorption selectivity for CO₂ over N₂ and H₂. The aqueous suspension of as-synthesized TB-Zn-CP showed strong green fluorescence (λ_max = 520 nm) characteristics due to the internal-charge transfer (ICT) transition and was used as a fluorescent sensor for the discriminative sensing of nitroaromatic explosives. The aqueous suspension of TB-Zn-CP showed the largest quenching responses with high selectivity for phenolic-nitroaromatics (4-NP, 2,4-DNP and PA) even in the concurrent presence of other potentially competing nitroaromatic analytes. The fluorescence titration studies also provide evidence that TB-Zn-CP detects picric acid as low as the parts per billion (26.3 ppb) range. Furthermore, the observed fluorescence quenching responses of TB-Zn-CP towards picric acid were highly reversible. The highly selective fluorescence quenching responses including the reversible detection efficiency make the nanoscale coordination polymer TB-Zn-CP a potential material for the discriminative fluorescent sensing of nitroaromatic explosives.

Self-assembly of a fullerene derivative with long alkyl chains in different solvents results in the formation of hierarchically-ordered supramolecular assemblies with well-defined 1, 2 and 3D architectures such as vesicles, fibers, discs and cones, whose fundamental structural sub-unit consists of bilayers.

The development of lanthanide based coordination polymer and metal–organic framework (CPs and MOFs) nanomaterials as novel functional (e.g. luminescent and magnetic) materials has attracted significant attention in recent times. This is in part due to the wide, but yet unique coordination requirements that the f-metal ions possess, as well as their attractive physical properties, which are often transferred to the bulk material. Hence, there is no surprise, that the design, synthesis and characterisation of lanthanide based CP/MOF materials (featuring either ‘pure’ lanthanides, or a mixture of both f- and d-metal ions) for applications in gas and small molecule absorption, storage, conversion/catalysis, chemical sensing, bio-imaging, drug delivery, etc. has been a prominent feature in the scientific literature. In this review, we give a selected overview of some of the recent developments in the area of Ln CP/MOF based nanomaterials for sensing, optical materials and bio-medicine research, as well as making reference to some more established examples, with the view of introducing, particularly to new researchers to the field, the powerful and attractive features of lanthanide based materials.

Reported herein are the synthesis, structural and magnetic characterisation of a dinuclear Fe^II triple helicate that displays an unprecedented reversible asymmetric high spin to low spin crossover characterised by a thermal hysteresis: indeed the high spin state can be recovered by white light irradiation at 10 K.