“One-stop” polymer circularly polarized luminescence platform: easy construction of full-color circularly polarized luminescent materials

Abstract

Polymer circularly polarized luminescent (CPL) materials have demonstrated significant application value in the fields of three-dimensional display, optical encryption, and biosensing due to their unique chiral optical properties. However, current polymer CPL materials generally exhibit inadequate precision in emission color tuning. Therefore, it is of great significance and wide research interest to construct polymer CPL materials with precise and controllable luminescence colors. In this work, highly reactive pentafluorophenol esters are introduced onto the pendants of helical polyisocyanides, and fluorescent groups with hydroxyl groups can be introduced into the copolymers via a simple transesterification. This method enables the successful covalent integration of chiral and fluorescent units, allowing rapid preparation of CPL materials emitting three primary colors (red, green, and blue). Due to the special photo-thermal responsive properties of the red fluorescent molecule spiropyran, unique photo-thermal responsive polyisocyanides can be obtained. By mixing the red-emitting polyisocyanide with green- and blue-emitting polyisocyanides, a variety of multicolor CPL materials can be prepared. This work establishes a “one-stop” CPL platform, which can quickly and easily produce multicolor CPL materials, providing new methods and options for the construction of polymer CPL materials.