Design, Synthesis and Study of Luminescent Transition Metal Carbene Complexes with Mechanochromic Behaviour

Mechanochemical processes and their corresponding changes of the macroscopic properties remain less fully understood. The underlying mechanism is fundamentally interesting and important for the molecular design of many advanced smart materials including mechanical responsive, shape-memory, self-healing and ultrahigh-strength materials. Due to the lack of understanding of mechanochemical changes, design of mechanoresponsive compounds or materials with tailored properties remains challenging. Because of this, research efforts on luminescent mechanochromic compounds have received growing attention in recent years; however, systematic modification of the luminescent mechanochromic characteristics is hard to achieve. In this project, we will develop luminescent mechanochromic transition metal complexes with their mechanochromism derived from simple and readily modifiable ligands. Apart from changing the framework of the ligands, it is anticipated that the tuning of the luminescent mechanochromic properties can also be achieved by coordination to different transition metal complex systems. This project will open up new strategy for designing transition metal-based luminescent mechanochromic materials. Their potential applications will also be studied.