Revealing the charge-transfer interactions in self-assembled organic cocrystals: two-dimensional photonic applications

Weigang Zhu; Renhui Zheng; Xiaolong Fu; Hongbing Fu; Qiang Shi; Yonggang Zhen; Huanli Dong; Wenping Hu

doi:10.1002/anie.201501414

Revealing the charge-transfer interactions in self-assembled organic cocrystals: two-dimensional photonic applications

Angew Chem Int Ed Engl. 2015 Jun 1;54(23):6785-9. doi: 10.1002/anie.201501414. Epub 2015 Apr 20.

Authors

Weigang Zhu^{1

2}, Renhui Zheng¹, Xiaolong Fu^{1

2}, Hongbing Fu¹, Qiang Shi¹, Yonggang Zhen¹, Huanli Dong¹, Wenping Hu³

Affiliations

¹ Institute of Chemistry, Chinese Academy of Science (ICCAS), Beijing 100190 (China).
² University of Chinese Academy of Science, Beijing 100049 (China).
³ Institute of Chemistry, Chinese Academy of Science (ICCAS), Beijing 100190 (China). huwp@iccas.ac.cn.

PMID: 25900165
DOI: 10.1002/anie.201501414

Abstract

A new crystal of a charge-transfer (CT) complex was prepared through supramolecular assembly and it has unique two-dimensional (2D) morphology. The CT nature of the ground and excited states of this new Bpe-TCNB cocrystal (BTC) were confirmed by electron spin resonance measurements, spectroscopic studies, and theoretical calculations, thus providing a comprehensive understanding of the CT interactions in organic donor-acceptor systems. And the lowest CT1 excitons are responsible for the efficient photoluminescence (Φ(PL)=19%), which can actively propagate in individual 2D BTCs without anisotropy, thus implying that the optical waveguide property of the crystal is not related to the molecular stacking structure. This unique 2D CT cocrystal exhibits potential for use in functional photonic devices in the next-generation optoelectronic communications.

Keywords: charge transfer; crystal engineering; density functional calculations; donor-acceptor systems; self-assembly.