Mo6Cl12-Incorporated Sol-Gel for Oxygen Sensing Applications

Excitation of hexanuclear molybdenum complexes such as Mo6Cl12 and its derivatives in the ultraviolet results in a strongly red-shifted luminescence centered at 750nm. Since oxygen efficiently quenches the luminescence, these thermally stable inorganic complexes are candidate lumophores for real-time, high temperature optical fiber based sensing of oxygen. Sol-gel films containing the acetonitrile complex of Mo6Cl12 were deposited on quartz substrates by dip coating. After drying, the films were heated at 200∘C for 1 h. The luminescence lineshapes of films before and after heating were unchanged, indicating that heating did not adversely affect the cluster photophysics. Compared to solutions of the acetonitrile complex, quenching by oxygen was smaller in the as-prepared films, but heating at 200∘C for 1 h increased the quenching, apparently due to increased oxygen permeability resulting from the loss of water or other small molecules from the matrix. These results confirm the potential of hexanuclear molybdenum complexes such as Mo6Cl12⋅2CH3CN as the lumophores in fiber optic oxygen sensors that can operate up to 200∘C.