Twisted tetrathiafulvalene crystals

Yongfan Yang, Kai Zong, St John Whittaker, Zhihua An, Melissa Tan, Hengyu Zhou, Alexander G. Shtukenberg, Bart Kahr, Stephanie S. Lee

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

Abstract

Optically-active optoelectronic materials are of great interest for many applications, including chiral sensing and circularly polarized light emission. Traditionally, such applications have been enabled by synthetic strategies to design chiral organic semiconductors and conductors. Here, centrosymmetric tetrathiafulvalene (TTF) crystals are rendered chiral on the mesoscale by crystal twisting. During crystallization from the melt, helicoidal TTF fibers were observed to grow radially outwards from a nucleation centre as spherulites, twisting in concert about the growth direction. Because molecular crystals exhibit orientation-dependent refractive indices, periodic concentric bands associated with continually rotating crystal orientations were observed within the spherulites when imaged between crossed polarizers. Under certain conditions, concomitant crystal twisting and bending was observed, resulting in anomolous crystal optical behavior. X-ray diffraction measurements collected on different spherulite bands indicated no difference in the molecular packing between straight and twisted TTF crystals, as expected for microscopic twisting pitches between 20-200 μm. Mueller matrix imaging, however, revealed preferential absorption and refraction of left- or right-circularly polarized light in twisted crystals depending on the twist sense, either clockwise or counterclockwise, about the growth direction. Furthermore, hole mobilities of 2.0 ± 0.9 × 10−6 cm2 V−1 s−1 and 1.9 ± 0.8 × 10−5 cm2 V−1 s−1 were measured for straight and twisted TTF crystals deposited on organic field-effect transistor platforms, respectively, demonstrating that crystal twisting does not negatively impact charge transport in these systems.

Original languageEnglish (US)
Pages (from-to)569-576
Number of pages8
JournalMolecular Systems Design and Engineering
Volume7
Issue number6
DOIs
StatePublished - Feb 16 2022

ASJC Scopus subject areas

  • Chemistry (miscellaneous)
  • Chemical Engineering (miscellaneous)
  • Biomedical Engineering
  • Energy Engineering and Power Technology
  • Process Chemistry and Technology
  • Industrial and Manufacturing Engineering
  • Materials Chemistry

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