What it is
The authors report hierarchical supramolecular assemblies with large chiroptical activity, built by coassembling achiral amphiphilic unimolecular micelles with chiral additives. Chiral fibrillar structures emerge from the nanostructured environment the micelles impose, driven by progressive chirality transfer through multiple hydrogen bonds between the components. Embedding a range of achiral luminescent molecules and nanocrystals yields full-color circularly polarized luminescence (CPL) materials with dissymmetry factors of about 10^-1, and tailoring the coassembly kinetics produces a concentration-dependent inversion of the chirality.
Why it matters
Supramolecular assemblies are attractive for chiral materials but have been limited by weak chiroptical activity, capping their practical use. Reaching dissymmetry factors near 10^-1 across full-color, including efficient red, circularly polarized luminescence, together with an accessible chirality inversion, pushes these soft assemblies toward the performance that quantum and optical technologies require.
Underlined numbers link to their source. Every metric and quoted figure is listed under Sources and data below.
Filed underSynthesis and Properties of Aromatic Compounds, Supramolecular Self-Assembly in Materials, Polydiacetylene-based materials and applications