Regulating the Helical Chirality of Racemic Polyacetylene by Chiral Polylactide for Realizing Full-Color and White Circularly Polarized Luminescence

Abstract

Exploring the generation and transfer of chirality at different hierarchical levels has always been a significant research subject. The present contribution reports our success in inducing and regulating the helical chirality of achiral macromolecules (racemic polyacetylene) by using a chiral helical macromolecule (chiral polylactide); helical chirality is sufficiently transferred between two types of helical polymer chains. Hydrogen bonds are demonstrated to play a crucial role in the chirality transfer process. More interestingly, the induced helical chirality can be further transferred to additionally added achiral fluorophore molecules, thereby leading to the emission of full-color and white circularly polarized luminescence (CPL). The present study opens up an unprecedented two-step chirality transfer process to realize both the generation of helical chirality in achiral polymers and full-color CPL emissions in achiral fluorescence compounds.