Homochiral Metalated Tetraphenylethylene-Based Organic Cages: Unusual
Chiral and Luminescent Behavior Depending on Thermodynamic and Kinetic
Aggregation
Abstract
Chirality and luminescence are important for both chemistry and biology,
which are highly influenced by aggregation. In this work, we reported a
pair of metalated tetraphenylethylene(TPE)-based organic cage
enantiomers, which feature a quadrangular prismatic cage structure.
These homochiral cages exhibit concentration-dependent chiral behaviors
alongside a propensity for thermodynamic aggregation. Aggregation caused
quench effect is found for these cages accompanying the increasing of
the concentrations. When a poor solvent is added to produce a kinetical
aggregation, the aggregation-annihilation circular dichroism and
aggregation-induced emission behaviours are observed for these
enantiomeric cages. By comparing these observations with the
photophysical behaviors of a pair of structurally similar organic
molecular enantiomers, the unique photophysical properties observed are
intricately linked to the metal-integrated TPE-functionalized cage
structures.