Chiral Deep Eutectic Solvents Enabled Full-color and White Circularly Polarized Luminescence from Achiral Luminophore.

Abstract

Herein, chiral deep eutectic solvents (DES) are prepared by lauric acid as hydrogen bond donors (HBD) and chiral menthol as the hydrogen bond acceptors (HBA). When achiral fluorescent molecules are doped into the menthol-based chiral DES, they emit circularly polarized luminescence (CPL) with handedness controlled by the molecular chirality (L or D) of menthol. Remarkably, the strategy is universal and a series of achiral fluorescent molecules can be endowed CPL activity, showing a full-color and white CPL upon appropriate mixing, which paves a convenient way to prepare white CPL materials. Interestingly, CPL appears only in a certain temperature range in DES. Variable-temperature spectra and other characterization method reveal that the H-bond network in the chiral DES plays an important role in inducing CPL. The work unveils how the interior structure as well as the hydrogen bond network of chiral DES transfer their chirality to the achiral luminophores for the first time and realizes a full-color and white CPL in DES.