The development of water-soluble chemical sensors suitable for detecting harmful inorganic chemicals, such as mercury (II) and other metal ions, is important for environment monitoring and in-situ biological sensors. Ionescu et. al. recently reported (Inorg. Chim. Acta, 2016, in press) a novel water soluble luminescent platinum (II) complex, Na2[Pt(BPS)(C^N)Cl], where BPS is 4,7-diphenyl-1,10-phenanthroline disulfonic acid and C^N is the cyclometalated form of 2-phenylpyrimidine. Interestingly this compound demonstrates luminescence enhancement in solutions of increasing salt concentration. In aqueous solution compound luminesces in the red part of the visible spectrum at 650 nm and has aerated lifetime of 100 ns in neat water and 160 ns in 1 M NaCl. The enhancement of luminescence intensity and lifetime along with growth of an absorption feature at 540 nm strongly suggests the optical properties originate from an aggregate species in solutions that increases in aggregate size with increasing salt concentration.
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