Flexible Full-Inorganic Ultrathin Films with Stable Circularly Polarized Luminescence Covering the Visible to Near-Infrared Region

Chemphyschem. 2024 Mar 20:e202400138. doi: 10.1002/cphc.202400138. Online ahead of print.

Abstract

Circularly polarized luminescence (CPL) materials hold significant value in various fields, including information storage, secure communication, three-dimensional displays, biological detection, and optoelectronic devices. Using the Langmuir-Schaeffer (LS) assembly technique, we successfully construct a series of large-area flexible optical ultrathin films. Impressively, the inorganic assembled ultrathin films exhibit excellent CPL optical activity covering the visible to near-infrared (NIR) region, with the luminescence asymmetry factor glum ranging from 0.59 to 0.72. Moreover, such ultrathin films also display outstanding mechanical flexibility, the optical activity of which even after 240 bending cycles shows almost no difference compared to the unbent samples. Owing to the ultra-broadband optical activity and ultra-stable optical activity of such full-inorganic assembled materials on flexible substrates, coupled with their excellent processability and outstanding mechanical flexibility, we anticipate they will find use in many fields such as communication technology and flexible optoelectronics.

Keywords: Circularly polarized luminescence (CPL); flexibility; ultrathin films; visible to NIR region.