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Christiane Görller-Walrand was born in Brussels, Belgium, in 1943. She is a Professor of Chemistry at the Catholic University of Leuven. She obtained her M.S. (1965) and Ph.D. (1969) in Chemistry at the Catholic University of Leuven. She was chairperson of the First International Conference on f-Elements (ICFE-1, Leuven, 1990). Her research interests include coordination chemistry, the spectroscopy of lanthanides and actinides, and MCD spectroscopy. Koen Binnemans was born in Geel, Belgium, in 1970. He obtained his M.S. (1992) and Ph.D. (1996) in Chemistry at the Catholic University of Leuven, under the supervision of Prof. C. Görller-Walrand. Since 1996, he has been a Postdoctoral Fellow of the Fund for Scientific Research Flanders (Belgium). He did postoctoral work with Prof. J. Lucas (Rennes, F) and Prof. D. W. Bruce (Exeter, UK). In 2000, he received the first ERES Junior Award (ERES: European Rare-Earth and Actinide Society).His current research interests are metal-containing liquid crystals (metallomesogens), MRI contrast reagents, lanthanide-doped sol−gel glasses, and lanthanide spectroscopy. Other interests include reading, collecting minerals, Egyptology, and the history of articifial lighting.

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Luminescent ionogels were prepared by doping an europium(III) tetrakis-diketonate complex into an imidazolium ionic liquid, followed by immobilization of the ionic liquid by confinement in a silica network. The ionogels were obtained by a non-hydrolytic method as perfect monoliths featuring both the transparency of silica and the ionic conductivity performances of ionic liquids. The ionogels contain 80 vol % of ionic liquid. The organic-inorganic hybrid materials showed a very intense red photoluminescence under ultraviolet irradiation. The red emission has a very high coloric purity.