Triple-Phosphorescent Gold Nanoclusters Enabled by Isomerization of Terminal Thiouracils in the Surface Motifs

Metal nanoclusters (NCs) hold great promise for expressing multipeak emission based on their well-defined total structure with diverse luminescent centers. Herein, we report the surface motif-dictated triple phosphorescence of Au NCs with dynamic color turning. The deprotonation-triggered isomerization of terminal thiouracils can evolve into a mutual transformation among their hierarchical motifs, thus serving a multipeak-emission expression with good tailoring. More importantly, the underlying electron transfer is thoroughly identified by excluding the radiative and nonradiative energy transfer, where electrons flow from the first phosphorescent state to the last two ones. The findings shed light on finely tailing motifs at the molecular level to motivate studies on customizable luminescence characteristics of metal NCs.