Materials with phototunable full-color circularly polarized luminescence (CPL) have a large storage density, high-security level, and enormous prospects in the field of information encryption and decryption. In this work, device-friendly solid films with color tunability are prepared by constructing Förster resonance energy transfer (FRET) platforms with chiral donors and achiral molecular switches in liquid crystal photonic capsules (LCPCs). These LCPCs exhibit photoswitchable CPL from initial blue emission to RGB trichromatic signals under UV irradiation due to the synergistic effect of energy and chirality transfer and show strong time dependence because of the different FRET efficiencies at each time node. Based on these phototunable CPL and time response characteristics, the concept of multilevel data encryption by using LCPC films is demonstrated.
Shape-programmable soft actuators are developed through the integration of electrically conductive liquid metals with shape-morphing liquid crystal networks. Their applications in light-fueled oscillator, crawler and programmable robotic Shadow Play are demonstrated.
18 July 2021 in Journal of the American Chemical Society
The formation of both left- and right-handed helical superstructures with circularly polarized luminescence has been achieved in a chiral tetraphenylethylene derivative just by varying the solution polarity without any change in molecular chirality.