High performance mechano-optoelectronic molecular switch

Highly-efficient molecular photoswitching occurs ex-situ but not to-date inside electronic devices due to quenching of excited states by background interactions. Here we achieve fully reversible in-situ mechano-optoelectronic switching in self-assembled monolayers (SAMs) of tetraphenylethylene molecules by bending their supporting electrodes to maximize aggregation-induced emission (AIE). We obtain stable, reversible switching across >1600 on/off cycles with large on/off ratio of (3.8 ± 0.1) × 10^3 and 140 ± 10 ms switching time which is 10-100x faster than other approaches. Multimodal characterization shows mechanically-controlled emission with UV-light enhancing the Coulomb interaction between the electrons and holes resulting in giant enhancement of molecular conductance. The best mechano-optoelectronic switching occurs in the most concave architecture that reduces ambient single-molecule conformational entropy creating artificially-tightened supramolecular assemblies. The performance can be further improved to achieve ultra-high switching ratio on the order of 10^5 using tetraphenylethylene derivatives with more AIE-active sites. Our results promise new applications from optimized interplay between mechanical force and optics in soft electronics.

Zhenyu Yang, Pierre-André Cazade, Jin-Liang Lin, Zhou Cao, Ningyue Chen, Dongdong Zhang, Lian Duan, Christian A. Nijhuis, Damien Thompson, Yuan Li