Multiple Stimuli-Responsive Luminescent Chiral Hybrid Antimony Chlorides for Anti-Counterfeiting and Encryption Applications

Stimuli-responsive circularly polarized luminescence (CPL) materials are ideal for information anti-countering applications, but the best-performing materials have not yet been identified. This work presents enantiomorphic hybrid antimony halides R-(C5H12NO)(2)SbCl5 (1) and S-(C5H12NO)(2)SbCl5 (2) showing mirror-imaged CPL activity with a dissymmetry factor of 1.2x10(-3). Interestingly, the DMF-induced structural transformation is realized to obtain nonemissive R-(C5H12NO)(2)SbCl5 center dot DMF (3) and S(C5H12NO)(2)SbCl5 center dot DMF (4) upon exposure to DMF vapor. The transformation process is reversed upon heating. DFT calculations showed that the DM-induced-quenched-luminescence is attributed to the intersection of the ground and excited state curves on the configuration coordinates. Unexpectedly, the nanocrystals of the chiral antimony halides 1 and 2 were prepared and indicate the excellent solution process performance. The reversible PL and CPL switching gives the system applications in information technology, anti-counterfeiting, encryption-decryption, and logic gates.