Coordination polymers for high index of refraction and ammonia sensing applications

Coordination polymers, which are solid-state systems with nodes and linkers, have been used to study countless material properties. The modularity in the choosing of components to make coordination polymers and the tunability of the properties of the resulting product from this choice has led to the production of many functional materials as well as studies into structure-property relationships. This thesis focuses on two material properties of the refractive index (CH 2) and luminescence-based sensing of ammonia (CH 3). The refractive index is seldom studied using this platform; through extension of design criteria used to make high index materials to coordination polymers, it was found that high indices (from 1.8-2.25) could be achieved using a sample ligand set. In CH 3, systems of the form Ph4AsMX[Au(CN)2]2 (MX: ZnCl, CdCl, CdBr) and Ph4AsMX2[Au(CN)2] (MX2: ZnBr2, ZnI2) exhibited strong luminescence response towards ammonia vapours so they were assessed for their sensing capabilities. Unfortunately, the materials are limited in that they only respond to concentrations of ammonia far exceeding biological relevance.