Kinetically Stable Nanoribbons with Improved Exciton Migration Length for Detecting Explosives

Here, we report the fabrication of metastable and stable assembles from tricarbazole-based oligomers via a pathway complex that is achieved by subtly changing the alkyl end chain length. Importantly, compared to stable nanoribbons, the resulting metastable nanoribbons have about a 3-fold enhanced exciton diffusion length that leads to 2- to 4-fold sensitivity enhancement for a broad range of explosives. These results will motivate preparation of kinetically trapped structures with improved properties via pathway complexity, particularly by subtly changing the substituents of molecules.