Circularly Polarized Organic Long-Persistent Luminescence from Polymer Films Doped with Chiral Cu(I) Complexes

The development of polymer materials with circularly polarized organic long-persistent luminescence (CP-OLPL) remains challenging yet highly desirable. Herein, a polymer-based OLPL system is prepared by embedding a Cu(I) complex rac-NDP-CuCl into polymethyl methacrylate, which exhibits a high phosphorescence quantum yield (Φ_phos.) of 64.0% and an emission duration exceeding 3 h under ambient conditions. Moreover, by simply replacing the racemic guest rac-NDP-CuCl with its enantiomers R-NDP-CuCl and S-NDP-CuCl, polymer-based luminescent materials with CP-OLPL properties are successfully developed for the first time. These doped polymer films display Φ_phos. values and emission durations comparable to those of the racemic system, along with satisfactory asymmetry factors for both circularly polarized phosphorescence and OLPL, reaching up to 4.79 × 10^-3 at room temperature. In contrast to conventional OLPL systems based on binary donor-acceptor doping, the present design facilitates the formation of intermediate charge-separated states via photoinduced metal-to-ligand charge transfer, which are effectively stabilized and spatially separated within the polar polymer matrix, thereby enabling notable OLPL and CP-OLPL emissions. These findings provide new insights into the molecular design of ambient OLPL materials and open a promising avenue for developing polymer-based CP-OLPL systems.