Evolving Fluorophores into Circularly Polarized Luminophores with a Chiral Naphthalene Tetramer: Proposal of Excimer Chirality Rule for Circularly Polarized Luminescence.

A versatile method for converting various fluorescent polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons into circularly polarized luminescence (CPL) excimer dyes with high glum and ΦFL values is reported. This method involves the functionalization of a chiral quaternaphthyl with six fluorophores via ester linkages in the last step of the synthesis. The usefulness of this approach was demonstrated for 1-, 2-, and 4-pyrenyl, 2- and 3-perylenyl, and 2-anthryl dyes. Most of them are the first or rare examples of CPL dyes. In the ground state, the fluorophores are tightly arranged by cumulative steric and electronic effects. In the excited state, the fluorophores form a twist excimer that maintains the ground-state conformations. The local chiral excimer directly affected the CPL properties. The systematic study on the signs of the CPLs allowed us to find a rule called the excimer chirality rule: right- and left-handed excimers exhibit (+)- and (-)-CPL, respectively.

Intense excimer CPL of pyrenes linked to a quaternaphthyl.

(R,R,R)-Quaternaphthyls possessing eight and six pyrenes (compounds 4 and 3) displayed intense excimer-CPL. The glum values in solution and in the solid state were +0.034-0.037 and +0.0053-0.0056, respectively. The glum values of 3 and 4 were indistinguishable, indicating that the pyrenes of 3 and 4 assumed the same conformation, even in excited states. The intense CPL was caused by conformationally rigid pyrenes arranged via the cumulative steric effects along the quaternaphthyl axis.