Novel fluorescence liquid crystals with high circularly polarized luminescence based on cholesterol-decorated dicyanodistyrylbenzene

The symmetric/asymmetric cholesterol- decorated dicyanodistyrylbenzene were prepared and the influence of symmetric/asymmetric structure on circularly polarized luminescence (CPL) properties was investigated for the first time. Both of them exhibited excellent fluorescence in solution and aggregated states. Their chiroptical properties were influenced greatly by the order degree of molecular stacking in different states. The symmetric structure with two chiral units was favorable for better CPL emission than asymmetric structure with one chiral unit. The highest glum value was 1.5 × 10−2 based on the effective chiral transfer and amplification of orderly liquid-crystalline molecular stacking of symmetric cholesterol-decorated dicyanodistyrylbenzene in mesophase.