Single-component color-tunable circularly polarized organic afterglow through chiral clusterization

• Published in: Nature communications Vol. 13; no. 1; p. 429
• Main Authors: Li, Hui, Gu, Jie, Wang, Zijie, Wang, Juan, He, Fei, Li, Ping, Tao, Ye, Li, Huanhuan, Xie, Gaozhan, Huang, Wei, Zheng, Chao, Chen, Runfeng
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: London Nature Publishing Group UK 20.01.2022; Nature Publishing Group; Nature Portfolio
• Subjects: 639/301/923/3931; 639/638/298/398; 639/638/298/923/3931; Chemical bonds; Chirality; Circular polarization; Clusters; Color; Design; Emissions; Excitation; Humanities and Social Sciences; Lifetime; Luminescence; multidisciplinary; NMR; Nuclear magnetic resonance; Phosphorescence; Room temperature; Science; Science (multidisciplinary); Wavelengths
• ISSN: 2041-1723; 2041-1723
• DOI: 10.1038/s41467-022-28070-9

Circularly polarized organic afterglow (CPOA) with both long-lived room-temperature phosphorescence (RTP) and circularly polarized luminescence (CPL) is currently attracting great interest, but the development of multicolor-tunable CPOA in a single-component material remains a formidable challenge. Here, we report an efficient strategy to achieve multicolor CPOA molecules through chiral clusterization by implanting chirality center into non-conjugated organic cluster. Owing to excitation-dependent emission of clusters, highly efficient and significantly tuned CPOA emissions from blue to yellowish-green with dissymmetry factor over 2.3 × 10 −3 and lifetime up to 587 ms are observed under different excitation wavelengths. With the distinguished color-tunable CPOA, the multicolor CPL displays and visual RTP detection of ultraviolent light wavelength are successfully constructed. These results not only provide a new paradigm for realization of multicolor-tunable CPOA materials in single-component molecular systems, but also offer new opportunities for expanding the applicability of CPL and RTP materials for diversified applications. Circularly polarized organic afterglow (CPOA) with both long-lived room-temperature phosphorescence and circularly polarized luminescence is attracting great interest, but the development of multicolor-tunable CPOA in a single-component material remains challenging. Here, the authors report a strategy to achieve multicolor CPOA through chiral clusterization by inserting a chirality center into a non-conjugated organic cluster.