Full‐Color Luminescence from Single‐Component Hydrocarbon Crystal: RGB Emission by Altering Molecular Packing Under Pressure

Abstract

AbstractFull‐color emission from solid single‐component organic materials is highly desired to realize inexpensive and non‐toxic organic electronics. However, as the three primary colors, red, green, and blue (RGB), have significantly different energies, observation of RGB luminescence from a single‐component molecule is extremely challenging. In this study, a coronene nanorod single‐component single‐crystal is prepared, which exhibits blue fluorescence at ambient conditions and realizes full‐color emission, for the first time, by altering the molecular packing through high‐pressure compression. A valuable insight into the relationships between structure and optical properties of coronene at high pressures is obtained by combining various spectroscopic studies. During compression, it is found that the tuneable piezochromic luminescence of coronene is strictly related to the molecular packing and crystallographic symmetry. This study not only provides insight into the structure‐optical property relationships of hydrocarbon but also promotes the development of single molecular systems with different molecular packing that exhibit RGB emissions even at ambient conditions even with a single excitation wavelength.