Preface 'Controlling photophysical properties of metal complexes: Toward molecular photonics'

摘要

Bright colors are one of the fascinating aspects of transition metal complexes. The desire to understand their origin has attracted many aspiring students to become coordination chemists. Interpretation of electronic spectra has been one of the driving forces behind the development of electronic structure theories: first crystal/ligand field and then molecular orbitals, to explain that even complexes with no d-electrons or with fully occupied d-orbitals exhibit strong colors due to charge-transfer transitions. Investigations of photochemical reactivity progressed alongside spectroscopic studies: from photosubstitution reactions of dd states to various kinds of photoredox processes triggered by charge-transfer excitations.