Promoting photoluminescent sensing performances of lanthanide materials with auxiliary ligands

The use of lanthanide coordination materials (LnCMs) for photoluminescent sensing is the hot research area, due to their sharp fluorescent emission lines, large Stokes’ shifts, and relatively long luminescent lifetime. However, the photoluminescent (PL) efficiencies, stabilities, as well as the sensing selectivity and sensitivities of LnCMs are subtle to interferences, which remains the major challenges that severely bottlenecked their applications. Since Ln(III) presents distinctively high coordination numbers, using auxiliary ligands to occupy the open metal sites have been recognized capable of substantially enhancing the stabilities and PL efficiencies of LnCMs. Moreover, the auxiliary ligands can promote the sensing selectivity and sensitivities via providing high-affinity binding sites and steric effects. Herein, the organic ligands that used for sensitizing Ln(III) are first summarized. Furthermore, the recent progresses of using auxiliary ligands in LnCMs for boosting the structural stabilities, PL efficiencies, as well as the sensing selectivity and sensitivities are discussed.