Broadband luminescence and emission enhancement

Three novel quinoline– and fluorene–coumarin hybrids were prepared and characterised by Fourier Transform–infrared spectroscopy, proton and carbon nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy, mass spectrometry, elemental analysis and ultraviolet–visible spectrophotometry. Their photoluminescence properties were investigated. All of these hybrid molecules exhibited a broadband emission from ca. 450 to 800 nm when excited by a 325 nm helium–cadmium laser at room temperature. Importantly, the fluorene–coumarin hybrid shows a very bright red emission at ca. 650 nm and displays up to a 10‐fold increase in fluorescence emission intensity, as compared with the other samples. The experimental results confirm that remarkable enhancements in the fluorescence emission intensity can be obtained by introducing a fluorene group into the azo‐bridged coumarin‐based π‐conjugated framework. The geometry structures and frontier orbitals are calculated by the ab initio Hartree–Fock method.