我室曹晓宇副教授和田中群教授在 JACS 上发表论文：Molecular face-rotating cube with emergent chiral and fluorescence properties

文章链接：http://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/jacs.7b07657

摘要：

Chiral cage compounds are mainly constructed from chiral precursors or based on the symmetry breaking during coordination-driven self-assembly. Herein, we present an alternative strategy to construct chiral organic cages by restricting the P or M rotational configuration of tetraphenylethylene (TPE) faces through dynamic covalent chemistry. The combination of graph theory, experimental characterizations and theoretical calculations suggests that the emergent chirality of cages is originated from the complex arrangements of TPE faces with different orientational and rotational configurations. Accompanied by the generation of chirality, strong fluorescence also emerged during the cage formation, even in dilute solutions with various solvents. In addition, the circularly polarized luminescence of the cages is realized as a synergy of their dual chiral and fluorescence properties. The chirality and fluorescence of cages are remarkably stable, because the intramolecular flipping of the phenyl rings in TPE faces is extremely restricted, as indicated by theoretical calculations. This study provides insight to construct chiral cages by the rational design through graph theory, and might facilitate the further design of the cages and other supramolecular assemblies from the aggregation-induced emission active building blocks.