Preparation of organic mechanochromic fluorophores with simple structures and promising mechanochromic luminescence properties†
Abstract
Organic mechanochromic fluorescent materials have attracted increasing interest over the last few years. However, organic mechanochromic fluorophores reported so far usually have complicated structures and require multi-step synthesis. In this paper, a simple method to design and synthesize organic mechanochromic fluorophores with simple structures and promising mechanochromic luminescence properties is reported. Based on this method, a broad range of pyrene-based phosphonium materials with promising mechanochromic luminescence have been developed. Among all pyrene-based mechanochromic materials reported so far, tributyl(pyren-1-ylmethyl)phosphonium fluorophore 1·PF6 reported in this paper is the smallest pyrene-based mechanochromic fluorophore with the longest emission wavelength shift. The method reported in this study has shown great potential for the rapid construction of mechanochromic materials and opened a new avenue to develop novel mechanochromic materials.