Synthesis and Crystal Structure of Cerium(III) Picolinate Complex

New cerium picolinate complex, Na2[Ce(pic)5]·picH·4H2O, has been prepared from the reaction of CeCl3·7H2O and α-pyridoin anion in methanol solution and structurally characterized as bicapped square antiprismatic geometry with ten coordination. Lanthanide complexes containing organic ligand with conjugate group have been widely studied as those show characteristic luminescent properties, which are applied to biomedical, sensing and industrial fields. The luminescent properties originating from 4f-4f, 5d-4f and charge transfer transition of lanthanide ions can be controlled to construct artificially molecular design. However, the design and preparation of lanthanide complexes is more difficult than that of transition metal complexes because of high coordination number of lanthanide ions. Therefore, the coordination chemistry as well as luminescence of lanthanides has been another challenging research field to the synthetic scientists in recent decades