Self-Assembly of Adaptive Chiral [1]Rotaxane for Thermo-Rulable Circularly Polarized Luminescence

It remains a formidable challenge to realize thermo-rulable circularly polarized luminescence (CPL). Herein, we propose a new strategy by covalently “potting” the emitter into a flexible chiral macrocycle as an adaptive chiral [1]rotaxane to address this issue. Different from its included analogue, the potted emitter [DS] showed adaptive conformers with tunable CPL in varied solvents. Significantly, upon controlled self-assembly, [DS] formed a channel-type nanoarchitecture ([DS]^A), which exhibited an extraordinary thermo-rulable CPL between 25–100 °C. Impressively, the g_lum was large as 0.024 at 25 °C, which was amplified to 0.040 at 90 °C with a decrease of QY (from 92 % to 80 %). By comparison, the assemblies of cage-type [DS]^B and the unpotted emitter showed irreversible or unanswered thermal behaviors. The work demonstrated the thermo-rulable and durable CPL for the first time and provided an insightful understanding of thermal effect on high-temperature and switchable CPL materials.