Steroid-Aromatics Clathrates as Chiroptical Materials with Circularly Polarized Luminescence and Phosphorescence

Solid-state host-guest complexation shows great potential in the fabrication of chiroptical and phosphorescent materials. Developing chiral hosts toward achiral guests with a wide guest scope would expand the chiroptical application, which however remains a major challenge. Here, we report the steroid-aromatic compound complexation in the solid state that could realize effective chirality transfer, circularly polarized luminescence, and room temperature phosphorescence (RTP). Progesterone shows cocrystallization behavior toward a wide scope of guests through CH-π interaction, which also offers a rigid yet chiral microenvironment to entrap aromatic luminophores within the cavities or channels. Depending on the geometry of the guests, the handedness of the Cotton effects and circularly polarized luminescence could be tuned. Host-guest complexation not only gave rise to Cotton effects and circularly polarized luminescence but also stabilized the triplet state of bromo-compounds to achieve RTP and circularly polarized phosphorescence. This work first illustrates the application of steroid complexation in the chiroptical and phosphorescent materials, which shows potential in the display and information aspects.