Tunable Circularly Polarized Luminescence from Single Crystal and Powder of the Simplest Tetraphenylethylene Helicate

Ming Hu; Feng-Ying Ye; Cong Du; Weizhou Wang; Ting-Ting Zhou; Miao-Li Gao; Minghua Liu; Yan-Song Zheng

doi:10.1021/acsnano.1c06644

Tunable Circularly Polarized Luminescence from Single Crystal and Powder of the Simplest Tetraphenylethylene Helicate

ACS Nano. 2021 Oct 26;15(10):16673-16682. doi: 10.1021/acsnano.1c06644. Epub 2021 Sep 21.

Authors

Ming Hu¹, Feng-Ying Ye¹, Cong Du², Weizhou Wang³, Ting-Ting Zhou¹, Miao-Li Gao¹, Minghua Liu², Yan-Song Zheng¹

Affiliations

¹ Key Laboratory of Material Chemistry for Energy Conversion and Storage, Ministry of Education, School of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering, Huazhong University of Science and Technology, Wuhan 430074, China.
² Beijing National Laboratory for Molecular Science (BNLMS), CAS Key Laboratory of Colloid Interface and Chemical Thermodynamics, Institute of Chemistry, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100190, China.
³ College of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering and Henan Key Laboratory of Function-Oriented Porous Materials, Luoyang Normal University, Luoyang 471934, China.

PMID: 34545741
DOI: 10.1021/acsnano.1c06644

Abstract

Tetraphenylethylene and its derivatives are a class of aggregation-induced emission (AIE) compounds that are most extensively and successfully studied. It has been found that the simplest TPE is easy to crystallize into homochiral M crystals or P crystals. However, no research on circularly polarized luminescence (CPL) of TPE solid is documented. In this paper, we report that TPE can grow into big and nonefflorescent single crystals in single helical conformation and has large birefringence that is comparative with commercially available products. The TPE single crystals can emit strong CPL with a very high g_lum value up to 0.53. Moreover, the sense and magnitude of CPL signals can be willfully tuned by simple rotation of the single crystal due to anisotropy of the crystals. This simple and promising CPL photonic material integrates emission, chirality, and birefringence together in one single crystal without needing an additional chiral dopant or conjugate polymer that can produce linearly polarized light. After being ground into fine powder and pressed as KBr pellets, the obtained nanocrystals of TPE also emit strong CPL light. Exceptionally, by mixing other achiral luminescent dyes together with TPE powder in KBr pellets, induced CPL signals were obtained, which could give full-color CPL emission. Although there were no interactions between TPE and the dyes in the pellets, induced CPL signals were realized through radiative energy transfer, providing a very simple method for the tuning of CPL emission.

Keywords: TPE homochiral single crystal; birefringence; circularly polarized luminescence; full-color CPL emission; radiative energy transfer; tetraphenylethylene helicate.