Drastic Enhancement of Photosensitized Energy Transfer Efficiency of a Eu(III) Complex Driven by Arsenic

In this study, we focused on arsenic as a new potential motif for the ligand design of high-efficiency, luminous lanthanide complexes. A Eu3+ complex bearing triphenylarsine oxide had a photosensitized energy-transfer efficiency 7.9 times higher than that of a Eu3+ complex bearing triphenylphosphine oxide. This is mainly due to the heavy-atom effect of arsenic, which was supported by evaluating the photoluminescence spectra of their corresponding Gd3+ complexes.