Formation of Composites in the System of Organic Europium Complexes–Silica

Lanthanide doped sol–gel glasses are an attractive type of luminescent material which can be processed at ambient temperatures. However, it is very difficult to obtain a uniform distribution of the complexes in glass materials because of their strong tendency to cluster formation. This problem can be solved by covalently linking of lanthanide complexes to silica matrix. In our work such materials were obtained by the sol–gel method of hydrolysis and polycondensation of tetramethoxysilane with europium complexes containing trimethoxysilyl groups. For this purpose we synthesized a novel ligand — (N-3-trimethoxysilylpropyl)-N′-1,10-phenanthroline-5-yl-thiocarbamide — and corresponding complexes Eu(tta)₃phen′]Cl₃ and Eu(pta)₃phen′]Cl₃. Our approach enabled us to simplify the synthetic procedure. A number of uniform samples showing intense luminescence have been obtained and the concentration dependence of their luminescence has been studied.