A theoretical approach for the intramolecular energy transfer process involving the ligand-to-metal charge transfer (LMCT) state in lanthanide compounds is developed. Considering a two-electron interaction, both the direct Coulomb and exchange interactions are taken into account, leading to expressions from which selection rules may be derived and transfer rates may be calculated. These selection rules show that the direct Coulomb and exchange mechanisms are complementary, in the same way as obtained in previous works for the case of ligand-lanthanide ion energy transfer processes. An important result from numerical estimates is that the channel ligand-LMCT state is by far the dominant case, leading to transfer rates higher than for the channel lanthanide ion-LMCT state by several orders of magnitude. The analysis of the emission quantum yield as a function of the relative energy position of the LMCT state in a typical Eu(3+) compound allows the identification of two quenching regions, the most pronounced one occurring close to the lower ligand triplet level.

For the first time, we observed photoluminescence in Eu(III) dithiocarbamate complexes at room temperature -- more specifically in [Eu(Et(2)NCS(2))(3)phen], [Eu(Et(2)NCS(2))(3)bpy] and the novel [Eu(Ph(2)NCS(2))(3)phen], where phen stands for 1,10-phenanthroline and bpy for 2,2'-bipyridine. Correlations between the electronic structure of the dithiocarbamate ligands on one hand, and covalency, intensity, and ligand field spectroscopic parameters on the other, could be established. Moreover, the relative values of the emission quantum efficiencies obtained for these complexes, as well as their dependence with temperature, could be satisfactorily described by a theoretical methodology recently developed.

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