<p>Organic compounds containing luminous rare-earth ions are of interest for numerous nanophotonic and plasmonic applications, including nanoscale lasers, biosensors, and optical magnetism studies. Optical studies of Eu³⁺ complexes revealed that ultra-thin LB monolayers are highly luminescent even when deposited directly on plasmonic metal, which makes these materials very promising for plasmonic applications and studies, including control and enhancement of magnetic dipole emission with a plasmonic environment. In this work, we synthesize amphiphilic complexes with various rare-earth ions Nd³⁺, Yb³⁺, and DPT ligands and show that they all are suitable for monolayer or multilayer deposition with the Langmuir–Blodgett (LB) technique.</p> Graphical abstract <p></p>