Achieving Very Bright Mechanoluminescence from Purely Organic Luminophores with Aggregation-Induced Emission by Crystal Design

Xu, Bingjia; Li, Wenlang; He, Jiajun; Wu, Sikai; Zhu, Qiangzhong; Yang, Zhiyong; Wu, William; Zhang, Yi; Jin, Chongjun; Lu, Po-Yen; Chi, Zhenguo; Liu, Siwei; Xu, Jiarui; Bryce, Martin R.

doi:10.1039/c6sc01325b

Achieving Very Bright Mechanoluminescence from Purely Organic Luminophores with Aggregation-Induced Emission by Crystal Design

Xu, Bingjia; Li, Wenlang; He, Jiajun; Wu, Sikai; Zhu, Qiangzhong; Yang, Zhiyong; Wu, William; Zhang, Yi; Jin, Chongjun; Lu, Po-Yen; Chi, Zhenguo; Liu, Siwei; Xu, Jiarui; Bryce, Martin R.

Authors

Bingjia Xu

Wenlang Li

Jiajun He

Sikai Wu

Qiangzhong Zhu

Zhiyong Yang

William Wu

Yi Zhang

Chongjun Jin

Po-Yen Lu

Zhenguo Chi

Siwei Liu

Jiarui Xu

Professor Martin Bryce m.r.bryce@durham.ac.uk
Professor

Abstract

Although bright organic mechanoluminescence (ML) has been observed for a few luminophores with aggregation-induced emission (AIE), details of the positive effect of AIE on ML performance remain unclear and a feasible design principle for the AIE-ML compounds has not yet been presented. Herein, an effective strategy for the molecular design of efficient AIE-ML materials is demonstrated, based on tetraphenylethene (TPE) building blocks with formyl substituents, which yield non-centrosymmetric crystal structures with prominent piezoelectric properties for molecular excitation combined with AIE features for intense emission. Following this approach, three AIE-active compounds have been developed and found to show unique ML characteristics. Furthermore, the results of single crystal X-ray analysis and density functional theory (DFT) calculations suggest that the ML performance would probably be further enhanced by creating molecules with larger dipolar moments and enhanced AIE properties.

Citation

Xu, B., Li, W., He, J., Wu, S., Zhu, Q., Yang, Z., …Bryce, M. R. (2016). Achieving Very Bright Mechanoluminescence from Purely Organic Luminophores with Aggregation-Induced Emission by Crystal Design. Chemical Science, 7(8), 5307-5312. https://doi.org/10.1039/c6sc01325b

Journal Article Type	Article
Acceptance Date	Apr 23, 2016
Online Publication Date	Apr 26, 2016
Publication Date	Aug 1, 2016
Deposit Date	Apr 29, 2016
Publicly Available Date	Apr 29, 2016
Journal	Chemical Science
Print ISSN	2041-6520
Electronic ISSN	2041-6539
Publisher	Royal Society of Chemistry
Peer Reviewed	Peer Reviewed
Volume	7
Issue	8
Pages	5307-5312
DOI	https://doi.org/10.1039/c6sc01325b