Luminescent Dendrimers as Ligands and Sensors of Metal Ions - Advanced Fluorescence Reporters in Chemistry and Biology - page 253

Luminescent Dendrimers as Ligands and Sensors
of Metal Ions

Giacomo Bergamini, Enrico Marchi, and Paola Ceroni

Abstract Suitably designed luminescent dendrimers can play the role of ligands
for luminescent and nonluminescent metal ions. This combination leads to species
capable of exhibiting interesting and unusual properties, including (1) shielding
excited states from quenching processes, (2) light harvesting, (3) conversion of
incident UV light into visible or infra red emission, and (4) metal ions sensing with
signal amplification.

Keywords Dendrimers Luminescent sensors Metal complexes Metal ions

Contents
1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 253
2 Luminescent Dendrimers Hosting Nonluminescent Metal Ions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 256
2.1 Luminescent Dendrimers Hosting Innocent Metal Ions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 256
2.2 Luminescent Dendrimers Hosting Metal Ion Quenchers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 263
3 Luminescent Dendrimers Hosting Luminescent Metal Ions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 269
3.1 Dendrons with a Coordinating Focal Point . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 270
3.2 Dendrimers with Amide Coordinating Units . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 272
3.3 Dendrimers with a Cyclam Coordinating Core . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 275
4 Conclusions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 278
References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 278

1 Introduction

Dendrimers [ 1 ] constitute a class of multibranched molecules that can - by design -
exhibit not only a high degree of order but also a high degree of complexity. From
a topological viewpoint, dendrimers contain three different regions: core, branches,