Reversible Switching Emissions of Tetraphenylethene Derivatives among Multiple Colors with Solvent Vapor, Mechanical, and Thermal Stimuli

Luminogens exhibiting reversible multicolored emission switching in the solid state have been seldom reported, though they are of theoretical and practical importance. Through introduction of weak interaction to the propeller-like molecules, we obtained two tetraphenylethene derivatives exhibiting morphology dependent multicolored emissions. The emissions of the two compounds could be switched reversibly among three colors in the solid state by reversible transformation among three different aggregation states of the luminogens when treated with different stimuli. Hence a possible strategy to construct luminogen exhibiting reversible multicolored emission swithching is disclosed.