Sensing through Coordination to the Metal Centre

The sensing through coordination to the metal centre approach requires the use of a stable luminescent chiral Ln(III) complex with at least one open coordination site (Fig. 3.9). This site is occupied by a solvent molecule that can be readily displaced when an anion-like molecule is added to the solution of the coordinatively unsaturated chiral Ln(III)-based 

This fascinating study by Montgomery et al. [124] clearly opens opportunities for developing chiral luminescent Ln(III) complex probes that can be observed by microscopy and, more importantly, have a cell-penetrating feature in addition to their chiroptical recognition properties. This area of research is currently imder investigation, as suggested by a series of articles published in the literature [11,13,125-131]. Most of these articles are 

2 Sensing through Coordination to the Antenna/Receptor Groups 

Since numerous research articles summarise the work of Parker et al. in this area [96,132-140], it is interesting to briefly discuss the recent findings of Kaizaki and his collaborators on the development of chiral Ln(III)-based systems to probe alkali metal ions. Working along these lines, Lunkley et al. [45,46] explained that the constant CPL activity of the tetrakis 

In addition to these findings suggesting that such Ln(III)-based compounds can serve as probes for recognition/sensing of cations, the observation of differing CPL activities with variation of alkali metal ions and solvents opens new perspective for the studies aimed at understanding the chiroptical spectra-structure relationships and, in particular, their 

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