Construction of molecular wires based on a gold(I) bis-sigma-acetylide building block incorporated into ruthenium(II) polypyridyl complexes.

An Ru(II)-Au(I)-Ru(II) triad has been synthesized from [Ru(bpy)2(3-ethynylphenanthroline)]2+ with Au(tht)Cl and characterized by spectroscopic means such as NMR and ESI-MS; the Ru(II)-Au(I)-Ru(II) triad shows an intense emission at 620 nm upon excitation at 360 nm, which suggests an efficient energy transfer from the Au site to Ru sites via extended pi-conjugation through the ethynyl units.