High circularly polarized luminescent liquid crystals based on R-binaphthol-cyanostilbene

The construction of high CPL (circularly polarized luminescent) materials in aggregated state is of great significance but rarely reported. In this work, series of CPL active materials based on R-binaphthol-cyanostilbene were designed and synthesized in yields of 73–78 %. They emitted strong fluorescence in aggregated state but the CPL emissions were at moderate level of 1.42–4.52 × 10 −3 for g lum values. However, as these CPL materials was added into 4-cyano-4′-n-pentylbiphenyl (a commercial nematic liquid crystal), the high CPL emissions in aggregated state were observed for these doped materials. An interesting chirality inversion was distinguished under the different doping concentrations. The g lum values of CPL emission for these CPL materials with pentyl, octyl and dodecyl groups were as high as 0.29, 0.35 and 0.23, respectively, and the corresponding absolute fluorescence quantum yields were 0.42, 0.44 and 0.41 at the doping concentration of 4 %, exhibiting the good application prospect for these doping commercial liquid crystals.