Multi-color Tunable and White Circularly Polarized Luminescent Composite Nanofibers Electrospun from Chiral Helical Polymer

Abstract

Circularly polarized luminescence (CPL)-active nanomaterials have attracted tremendous attention. However, it is still a big challenge to conveniently fabricate multi-color and white CPL-active nanomaterials on a large scale. Herein, a simple and scalable approach to achieve the above goals is presented. Multicolor CPL-active nanofibers are fabricated from chiral helical substituted polyacetylene, achiral fluorescent dyes and polyacrylonitrile via uniaxial electrospinning; the highest luminescence dissymmetry factor (g _lum) of the resulting nanofibers can reach 10^− 2. Furthermore, white CPL-active nanofibers are obtained by coaxial electrospinning, in which the resulting core-shell structure has excellent adjustability and can be utilized to physically isolate different fluorescent dyes to reduce energy transfer efficiency; therefore, stable white CPL emissions can be achieved with high g _lum values up to 10^− 3. Notably, the prepared white-emission CPL nanofibrous films show bright white circularly polarized light when coated on UV chips, demonstrating their future application in constructing low-cost and flexible light-emitting devices such as circularly polarized light-emitting diodes.

Graphical Abstract

Multi-color tunable and white circularly polarized luminescence (CPL)-active nanofibers are prepared from chiral helical polymers and commercial fluorescence dyes via electrospinning process. The obtained composite nanofibers exhibit considerable luminescence dissymmetry factor (g _lum), with the highest g _lum up to 10⁻². White circularly polarized light-emitting diodes are further fabricated by packaging the white CPL nanofiber film on UV chip.

Funding

National Natural Science Foundation of China(52003022)