“…The versatility and tailorability of physicochemical properties of lanthanide ions make them key to an extremely wide range of techniques and devices (Jones, 2011;Pyykkö, 2015;Samson et al, 2011;Maurin et al, 2017;Guillou et al, 2016). During the past two decades, the design and synthesis of lanthanide coordination polymers (LnCPs) have received great attention due to their powerful attributes, originating from specific functional applications, such as photocatalysis (Qiao & Schelter, 2018), gas storage and separation (Banerjee et al, 2015;Roy et al, 2014;Alezi et al, 2015), magnetism (Liu et al, 2014;Zhang et al, 2015;Mohapatra et al, 2013;Cai et al, 2013;Zou et al, 2010), sensing (Wu et al, 2019(Wu et al, , 2013Chen et al, 2010;Dou et al, 2014;Chen et al, 2017;Zhou et al, 2018;Xu et al, 2017) and tunable luminescence (Cui et al, 2014;SeethaLekshmi et al, 2017;Bü nzli & Piguet, 2005;Xiao et al, 2016;Wu et al, 2011aWu et al, , 2017). These applications are made possible by the characteristic luminescent behaviour of ISSN 2052-5206 # 2019 International Union of Crystallography lanthanide elements, which stem from the shielding of their 4f core-like electrons and the large numbers of unpaired electrons of each Ln 3+ metal centre (Bü nzli & Piguet, 2005;Heffern et al, 2014;Woodruff et al, 2013;.…”