Multi-stimuli responsive behaviors in a new chiral hybrid nitroprusside salt (R-3-hydroxypyrrolidinium)2[Fe(CN)5(NO)

Abstract

Multi-stimuli responsive materials controlled and coupled by two or more channels have a broad range of applications in the field of switches, memories, and molecular machines. The exploration of the material is currently focused on the pure organic system, which limits the development of such materials greatly. In this work, we present a new chiral organic-inorganic hybrid salt, (R-3-hydroxypyrrolidinium)2[Fe(CN)5(NO)] (1), which exhibits rare multi-stimuli responsive behaviors in thermal, mechanical and optical channels. In detail, 1 undergoes a C2-P21221 phase transition deriving from the thermal motion of organic cations with the increase of temperature, but the reverse transition can only be induced by mechanical pressure. Moreover, polycrystalline hybrid salt showed photo-responsive performance, i.e., the ground-state N-bound nitrosyl ligand adopts two configurations in excited states caused by light in 532 nm irradiation, accompanying with a photo-induced structural transformation of the anionic framework. Namely, the thermal motion characteristics of organic cations, the photoresponse characteristics of anionic inorganic skeleton and the pressure characteristics from hydrogen bonds are simultaneously integrated in 1. This unprecedented coupling mechanism of multi-stimuli responses makes 1 a potential candidate for future multichannel data storage applications.