Cooperative supramolecular polymerization of styrylpyrenes for color-dependent circularly polarized luminescence and photocycloaddition

Wei Yuan; Letian Chen; Chuting Yuan; Zidan Zhang; Xiaokai Chen; Xiaodong Zhang; Jingjing Guo; Cheng Qian; Zujin Zhao; Yanli Zhao

doi:10.1038/s41467-023-43830-x

Cooperative supramolecular polymerization of styrylpyrenes for color-dependent circularly polarized luminescence and photocycloaddition

Nat Commun. 2023 Dec 4;14(1):8022. doi: 10.1038/s41467-023-43830-x.

Authors

Wei Yuan^#¹, Letian Chen^#², Chuting Yuan^#³, Zidan Zhang⁴, Xiaokai Chen¹, Xiaodong Zhang¹, Jingjing Guo¹, Cheng Qian¹, Zujin Zhao⁵, Yanli Zhao⁶

Affiliations

¹ School of Chemistry, Chemical Engineering and Biotechnology, Nanyang Technological University, 21 Nanyang Link, Singapore, 637371, Singapore.
² State Key Laboratory of Luminescent Materials and Devices, Guangdong Provincial Key Laboratory of Luminescence from Molecular Aggregates, South China University of Technology, Guangzhou, 510640, China.
³ CAS Key Laboratory of Soft Matter Chemistry, Department of Polymer Science and Engineering, University of Science and Technology of China, Hefei, Anhui, 230026, China.
⁴ McKetta Department of Chemical Engineering, University of Texas at Austin, Austin, TX, 78712, USA.
⁵ State Key Laboratory of Luminescent Materials and Devices, Guangdong Provincial Key Laboratory of Luminescence from Molecular Aggregates, South China University of Technology, Guangzhou, 510640, China. mszjzhao@scut.edu.cn.
⁶ School of Chemistry, Chemical Engineering and Biotechnology, Nanyang Technological University, 21 Nanyang Link, Singapore, 637371, Singapore. zhaoyanli@ntu.edu.sg.

^# Contributed equally.

Abstract

Developing facile and efficient methods to obtain circularly polarized luminescence (CPL) materials with a large luminescence dissymmetry factor (g_lum) and fluorescence quantum yield (Φ_Y) is attractive but still challenging. Herein, supramolecular polymerization of styrylpyrenes (R/S-PEB) is utilized to attain this aim, which can self-assemble into helical nanoribbons. Benefiting from the dominant CH-π interactions between the chromophores, the supramolecular solution of S-PEB shows remarkable blue-color CPL property (g_lum: 0.011, Φ_Y: 69%). From supramolecular solution to gel, the emission color (blue to yellow-green) and handedness of CPL (g_lum: -0.011 to +0.005) are concurrently manipulated, while the corresponding supramolecular chirality maintains unchanged, representing the rare example of color-dependent CPL materials. Thanks to the supramolecular confine effect, the [2 + 2] cycloaddition reaction rate of the supramolecular solution is 10.5 times higher than that of the monomeric solution. In contrast, no cycloaddition reaction occurs for the gel and assembled solid samples. Our findings provide a vision for fabricating multi-modal and high-performance CPL-active materials, paving the way for the development of advanced photo-responsive chiral systems.