Hierarchical Emergence and Dynamic Control of Chirality in a Photoresponsive Dinuclear Complex

Abstract

Chiroptical photoswitches are of interest from a viewpoint of applications in advanced information technologies. We report dynamic on-off photoswitching of circularly polarized luminescence (CPL) in a binuclear europium complex system. Two coordination units are arranged closely in a chiral fashion by a photoresponsive ligand with a one-handed helical structure. The chirality in the helical scaffold is hierarchically transferred to the chirality in nine-coordinate complex sites. The chiral close arrangement of complex units induces the enrichment of a specific chiral coordination structure in the nine-coordinate europium sites. The chiral arrangement of complex units is switched in conjunction with the photoinduced helix-nonhelix structural change in the photoresponsive framework, demonstrating on-off switching of CPL with high contrast.