Bacterial Cellulose: A Versatile Chiral Host for Circularly Polarized Luminescence

Abstract

Materials capable of circularly polarized luminescence (CPL) have attracted considerable attention for their promising potential applications. Bacterial cellulose (BC) was characterized as having a stable right-handed twist, which makes it a potential chiral host to endow luminophores with CPL. Then, the CPL-active BC composite film was constructed by simply impregnating bacterial cellulose pellicles with dilute aqueous solutions of luminophores (rhodamine B, carbon dots, polymer dots) and drying under ambient conditions. Simple encapsulation of luminophores renders BC with circularly polarized luminescence with a dissymmetry factor of up to 0.03. The multiple chiral centers of bacterial cellulose provide a primary asymmetric environment that can be further modulated by supramolecular chemistry, which is responsible for its circular polarization ability. We further demonstrate that commercial grade paper may endow luminophores with CPL activity, which reifies the universality of the method.