Aggregation-Induced Emission-Active Chiral Helical Polymers Show Strong Circularly Polarized Luminescence in Thin Films

Circularly polarized luminescence (CPL) materials with aggregation-induced emission (AIE) performance have attracted extensive attention. In this study, we successfully achieve CPL emissions in chiral helical substituted polyacetylenes with tetraphenylethene (TPE) pendants. The polymers are constructed by copolymerization of an achiral TPE-containing acetylenic monomer with a chiral monomer. The obtained polymer exhibits unique state-dependent CPL behavior. More specifically, the polymer is CPL-silent in a dispersion state but CPL-active in solid thin films with a high luminescence dissymmetry factor (|g lum| = 3.6 × 10–2). Moreover, significantly different from the common chirality transfer mechanism for preparing CPL-active materials, the CPL generation herein is due to the “matching rule” between fluorescent moieties and chiral helical polyacetylene. The present study provides new perspectives for preparing CPL materials with large g lum values in the solid state.