Lanthanide MOFs for inducing molecular chirality of achiral stilbazolium with strong circularly polarized luminescence and efficient energy transfer for color tuning

We present herein an innovative host-guest method to achieve induced molecular chirality from an achiral stilbazolium dye (DSM). The host-guest system is exquisitely designed by encapsulating the dye molecule in the molecule-sized chiral channel of homochiral lanthanide metal-organic frameworks (P-(+)/M-(-)-TbBTC), in which the P- or M-configuration of the dye is unidirectionally generated via a spatial confinement effect of the MOF and solidified by the dangling water molecules in the channel. Induced chirality of DSM is characterized by solid-state circularly polarized luminescence (CPL) and micro-area polarized emission of DSM@TbTBC, both excited with 514 nm light. A luminescence dissymmetry factor of 10-3 is obtained and the photoluminescence quantum yield (PLQY) of the encapsulated DSM in DSM@TbTBC is ∼10%, which is close to the PLQY value of DSM in dilute dichloromethane. Color-tuning from green to red is achieved, owing to efficient energy transfer (up to 56%) from Ln3+ to the dye. Therefore, this study for the first time exhibits an elegant host-guest system that shows induced strong CPL emission and enables efficient energy transfer from the host chiral Ln-MOF to the achiral guest DSM with the emission color tuned from green to red.