On December 13, the research group led by Prof. Zheng Yansong published an online paper entitled “Hindered Tetraphenylethylene Helicates: Chiral Fluorophores with Deep-Blue Emission, Multiple-Color CPL, and Chiral Recognition Ability” on Angew Chem Int Ed.

New hindered tetraphenylethylene (TPE) helicates with substitution at 2,6-position of phenyl rings were designed and synthesized. Due to hindrance, the TPE helicates could emit strong deep-blue to violet fluorescence both in solid state and in solution, and could be resolved into enantiomers that could emit strong and multicolor circularly polarized luminescence (CPL) light, exhibit a high enantioselective recognition of chiral tartaric acid and its derivatives in CPL spectra, enable CPL further enhancement. Surprisingly, the derived helicate tetramines possessed amino groups with a planar structure and sp 2 -hybridized nitrogen that are never reported, arousing the change between AIE effect and ACQ phenomenon through photoinduced electron transfer (PET). With advantages of short synthetic route, many modification positions, deep-blue to violet emission, wide CPL tuning, and highly chiral recognition ability, the hindered TPE helicates show broad prospects as chiral materials.

This paper is supported by National Natural Science Foundation of China for Major Research Program on the Precise Construction of Multi-level Chiral Substances and the Surface Project (No. 91856125, 22072050 and 21673089). The first author of the paper is PhD student Hu Ming. The corresponding author is Prof. Zheng Yansong. The co-authors are PhD students Ye Fengying and Yu Wei from the School of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering, Huazhong University of Science and Technology, Prof. Liu Minhua and PhD student Du Cong from the Institute of Chemistry, Chinese Academy of Sciences and Dr. Wang Weizhou from School of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering, Luoyang Normal University.

Link to this paper: https://doi.org/10.1002/anie.202115216