Mechanochormic luminescent behavior in hydrogen bonded liquid-crystalline complex

Mizuho Kondo,  Seiya Miura,  Mayuko Hashimoto,  Nobuhiro Kawatsuki
Department of Materials Science and Chemistry, University of Hyogo


Abstract

Mechanochromic luminescent (MCL) materials that exhibit isothermal change in solid-state photolumienscent (PL) color in response to mechanical stimuli such as grinding, shearing, pressing and stretching have attracted much attention in fundamental research and practical applications because they can directly affect microscopic luminescence property by macroscopic mechanical deformation. Various types of MCL compounds have been reported and some MCL luminophores have had nitrogen atom in conjugated structure to function as an electronical tuning unit. In the previous work, we prepared pyridine-terminated MCL compound and explored the effect of nitrogen position on mechanoresponsive behavior. We also achieved its uniaxial alignment on a photolaignment polymer layer via formation of hydrogen bonding between the dye and the film. Connection with polymer substrate by non-covalent bonding enables to control the molecular orientation with suppressing vaporization of the dye compound. Additionally, the nitrogen atom in the conjugated structure has a potential to affect the elctrooptic property in response to acid resulting in changing MCL bahavior without chemical modification. However, the dye lost mechanoresponsiviness in the previous work upon combining with acidic dopant due to change in solid structure. In this work, we designed a novel acidic dopoant for pyridine terminated MCL containing cyanostyryl and bistrifluoromethyl substitution to form suitable intermolecular interactions in the complex. We combined the acid to the luminophore and explored their PL properties. The complex exhibited liquid-crystalline phase and shifted its PL spectrum peak to long wavelength by mechanical grinding. The complex also changed its excitation spectrum, fluorescence lifetime and diffusion spectrum and these changes reverted their initial states upon heating above their melting point, revealing the acid complex changed its PL properties with maintaining machanoresponsive behavior.