Polarized emission from a rhenium metal-ligand complex.

We report the first observation of polarized emission from a rhenium-phenanthroline complex, Re(CO)3(phen)Cl. Highly luminescent rhenium complexes are known, with quantum yields near 0.5 and lifetimes in excess of 10 μs. The detection of polarized emission suggests the use of rhenium complexes as probes of the hydrodynamics of large macromolecular complexes and for use in fluorescence polarization immunoassays with gated detection.