LAUSR

Abstract Pt (II) compounds have drawn great attention due to their excellent phosphorescence properties. Interestingly, Pt (II) complexes with planar core structures have a great tendency to generate stacked dimers, leading to excimer emission in electrogenerated chemiluminescence or electrochemiluminescence (ECL) processes. It was found through this work that the excimer ECL could be adjusted to monomer excited one by introducing bulky substituents to the ligands. Here, the electrochemical and ECL properties of a tetradentate chelate Pt (II) complex ( Ptm ) containing an NˆC-chelate phenyl-1,2,3-triazolyl (ptrz) ligand and an NˆC-chelate pyridyl-1,2,4-triazolyl (pytrz) ligand in the central core, along with a diphenyl amino substituent in the phenyl of ptrz ligand, was investigated. Ptm showed weak ECL efficiency in the annihilation path and persulfate turned out to be a very good co-reactant to enhance dramatically the ECL intensity. Light emission mechanisms were probed by means of the spooling ECL spectroscopy. It was found that only monomer excited states were generated in the ECL process attributing to the large steric hindrance by bulky diphenyl amino substituent in the ptrz ligand. This is in contrast to ECL of some Pt complex where diphenyl amino substituent was replaced by two small size fluorine atoms leading to dominant excimer ECL emission. Those results well indicate that the ECL of Pt (II) complexes with planar core structures can be adjusted by simply increasing the steric hindrance.