Optically active cyclic dimer, trimer, and tetramer, in which the p-arylene-ethynylenes were stacked, were prepared using enantiopure 4,7,12,15-tetrasubstituted [2.2]paracyclophane as the chiral building block. All molecules exhibited clear Cotton effects in their absorption bands with mirror image spectra, and the signals of the longest wavelengths of the (Rp )- and (Sp )-isomers were positive and negative, respectively. Their circularly polarized luminescence (CPL) signs corresponded with the those of the first Cotton effect. For all molecules, molecular orbitals were localized in one of the stacked p-arylene-ethynylenes in the excited states, resulting in a similar photoluminescence behavior. Although the cyclic dimer did not emit CPL, the cyclic trimer and tetramer exhibited intense CPL emissions with a relatively high dissymmetry factor in the order of 10-3 . Their optical and chiroptical properties were reproduced by time-dependent density functional theory calculations.
Keywords: [2.2]paracyclophane; circular dichroism; circularly polarized luminescence; cyclic oligomer; planar chirality.
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