Chiral silver cluster-based light-harvesting systems: Enantioselective chirality transfer and amplified circularly polarized luminescence

Summary

The construction of effective artificial chiral light-harvesting systems (C-LHSs) is significantly important as it provides insights into the hierarchical levels of chirality evolution in natural systems. Herein, we devised pairs of chiral blue emitters, S-/R-binaphthalene dioxygen-N-octadecamidephthalimide (S-/R-BPOA), which function as donors of chirality and light absorbers. S-/R-BPOA co-assembled with enantiomers of atomically precise yellow-emitting subnanometer-scale Ag₆ clusters to fabricate C-LHSs. Within these hybrid C-LHSs, we successfully resolved enantioselective chirality/energy transfer that was dependent on the handedness of the components. This promoted the efficient circularly polarized energy transfer in chirality-compatible ensembles, resulting in a remarkable amplification of circularly polarized luminescence (CPL) in the ultrasmall silver cluster. The achieved dissymmetry factor (g_lum) reached an impressive value of 1.54 × 10⁻², and white-light CPL with chromaticity coordinates of (0.32, 0.33) was obtained. Furthermore, the customizable fluorescence and CPL in these C-LHSs bestow them with potential application possibilities in information storage and encryption.