TY - JOUR A1 - Feiler, Torvid A1 - Bhattacharya, Biswajit A1 - Michalchuk, Adam A1 - Rhim, S.-Y. A1 - Schöder, V. A1 - List-Kratochvil, E. A1 - Emmerling, Franziska T1 - Tuning the mechanical flexibility of organic molecular crystals by polymorphism for flexible optical waveguides N2 - The ability to selectively tune the optical and the mechanical properties of organic molecular crystals offers a promising approach towards developing flexible optical devices. These functional properties are sensitive to crystallographic packing features and are hence expected to vary with polymorphic modification. Using as a model system the photoluminescent material 4-bromo-6-[(6-chloropyridin-2-ylimino)methyl]phenol (CPMBP), we herein demonstrate the simultaneous tuning of mechanical flexibility and photoluminescence properties via polymorphism. Two new polymorphic forms of CPMBP were obtained from a solution and fully characterised using a combination of experiments and density functional theory simulations. These polymorphic forms exhibit remarkably distinct mechanical properties and an order of magnitude difference in photoluminescence quantum yield. The mechanically plastic form has a higher quantum yield than the brittle polymorphic form. However, their photoluminescence emission profile is largely unaffected by the observed polymorphism, thereby demonstrating that the optical properties and bulk mechanical properties can in principle be tuned independently. By distinguishing between active (involving absorption and emission) and passive (involving no absorption) light propagation, the waveguiding properties of the plastic form of CPMBP (form II) were explored using the straight and bent crystals to highlight the potential applications of CPMBP in designing flexible optical devices. Our results demonstrated that polymorph engineering would be a promising avenue to achieve concurrent modulation of the optical and mechanical properties of photoluminescent molecular crystals for next-generation flexible optical device applications. KW - Mechanochemistry KW - Flexible PY - 2021 UR - https://nbn-resolving.org/urn:nbn:de:kobv:b43-532075 DO - https://doi.org/10.1039/d1ce00642h VL - 23 IS - 34 SP - 5815 EP - 5825 PB - Royal Society of Chemistry CY - London AN - OPUS4-53207 LA - eng AD - Bundesanstalt fuer Materialforschung und -pruefung (BAM), Berlin, Germany ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Schoder, S. A1 - Schröder, H. V. A1 - Cera, L. A1 - Puttreddy, R. A1 - Güttler, Arne A1 - Resch-Genger, Ute A1 - Rissanen, K. A1 - Schalley, C. A. T1 - Strong Emission Enhancement in pH-Responsive 2:2 Cucurbit[8]uril Complexes N2 - Organic fluorophores, particularly stimuli-responsive molecules, are very interesting for biological and material sciences applications, but frequently limited by aggregation- and rotation-caused photoluminescence quenching. A series of easily accessible bipyridinium fluorophores, whose emission is quenched by a twisted intramolecular charge-transfer (TICT) mechanism, is reported. Encapsulation in a cucurbit[7]uril host gave a 1:1 complex exhibiting a moderate emission increase due to destabilization of the TICT state inside the apolar cucurbituril cavity. A much stronger fluorescence enhancement is observed in 2:2 complexes with the larger cucurbit[8]uril, which is caused by additional conformational restriction of rotations around the aryl/aryl bonds. Because the cucurbituril complexes are pH switchable, this system represents an efficient supramolecular ON/OFF fluorescence switch. KW - Sensor KW - pH KW - Dye KW - Supramolecular chemistry KW - Synthesis KW - Host-guest interaction KW - Fluorescence KW - Enhancement KW - Curcubituril KW - Macrocyclus KW - Solid state PY - 2019 DO - https://doi.org/10.1002/chem.201806337 SN - 0947-6539 VL - 25 IS - 13 SP - 3257 EP - 3261 PB - WILEY-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA CY - Weinheim AN - OPUS4-47599 LA - eng AD - Bundesanstalt fuer Materialforschung und -pruefung (BAM), Berlin, Germany ER -