Luminescent lanthanide coordination compounds with pyridine-2,6-dicarboxylic acid

The rapidly growing number of luminescent compounds based on lanthanide ions illustrates high interest due to the numerous applications on lighting, optical communications, sensors, photonics and biomedical devices. In this review, we choose luminescent compounds based on pyridine-2,6-dicarboxylic acid to discuss the synthetic strategy of functional luminescent compounds, various types of emitting, tunable emission colors, and the mechanism of enhancing and quenching fluorescence. The unique luminescence features them as promising materials. We focus on recent significant advances of this field and provide a comprehensive review on multifunctional lanthanide compounds. - Graphical abstract: In the last two decades, luminescent lanthanide compounds have attracted extensive attentions for the numerous light applications. Pyridine-2,6-dicarboxylic acid (H₂pydc) as a high conjugated and symmetric ligand can form diverse compounds with excellent luminescence. According to these compounds, the nature of luminescence, relationship between structures and luminescence are discussed, and the applications are prospected.