Construction of soft porous crystal with silole derivative: strategy of framework design, multiple structural transformability and mechanofluorochromism

Novel fluorescent organic soft porous crystals have been designed and prepared based on a multi-substituted silole bearing 1-phenyl-2,2-dicyanoethene moieties (molecule 8). 8 exhibited a series of emission colors, ranging from yellow to dark red with an over 70 nm shift of emission maximum. Molecule 8 also showed the ability to reversibly switch between different solid states, and a typical mechanofluorochromism was observed by cyclic operation of the grinding–heating–cooling processes. In addition, two single crystals (O and R) were successfully obtained in proper conditions, and the crystallographic data indicated that crystal O and R had reasonable hollow structures, inside which different solvent molecules were selectively encapsulated. More importantly, we have presented a proof-of-concept example of the strategy for the designation of organic soft porous crystals with a conjugated fluorophore and demonstrated the successful achievement of softness, porosity and crystallization ability. This design strategy is instructive to design and construct organic soft porous crystals with other conjugated building blocks and develop novel smart and stimuli-responsive photo/electronic materials.