Control over the handedness of circularly polarized luminescence (CPL) in supramolecular gels is of special significance in biology and optoelectronics; however, it still remains a great challenge to precisely and efficiently regulate the chirality of CPL. Herein, a chiral phenylalanine-derived hydrogelator and achiral coumarin derivatives can co-assemble into nanofibrous hydrogels with controllable chirality, and the handedness of CPL of these hydrogels can be efficiently inverted by coumarin derivatives through noncovalent interactions, which can be further tuned at will by incorporating metal ions into the co-assembly. The hydrogen bonds, coordination interactions, and steric hindrance are proved to be the crucial factors for the CPL inversion. This study provides feasible strategies to efficiently regulate the handedness of CPL through co-assembly, and these CPL materials may have potential applications in the fields of photoelectric devices, smart chiroptical materials, and biological systems.
Keywords: circularly polarized luminescence; coumarin; hydrogels; self-assembly; supramolecular chirality.