Recent advances of near‐infrared (Nir) emissive metal complexes bridged by ligands with n‐ and/or o‐donor sites

Near‐infrared (NIR) emissive metal complexes have shown potential applications in optical communication, chemosensors, bioimaging, and laser and organic light‐emitting diodes (OLEDs) due to their structural tunability and luminescence stability. Among them, complexes with bridging ligands that exhibit unique emission behavior have attracted extensive interests in recent years. The target performance can be easily achieved by NIR light‐emitting metal complexes with bridging ligands through molecular structure design. In this review, the luminescence mechanism and design strategies of NIR luminescent metal complexes with bridging ligands are described firstly, and then summarize the recent advance of NIR luminescent metal complexes with bridging ligands in the fields of electroluminescence and biosensing/bioimaging. Finally, the development trend of NIR luminescent metal complexes with bridging ligands are proposed, which shows an attractive prospect in the field of photophysical and photochemical materials.