Self-Assembly of Emissive Nanocellulose/Quantum Dots Nanostructures for Chiral Fluorescent Materials.

Chiral fluorescent materials with fluorescent nanoparticles co-assembled into chiral structure represent a grand challenge. Here, we report self-assembled emissive needle-like nanostructures through decorating cellulose nanocrystals (CNCs) with carbon quantum dots (CQDs). This assembly is facilitated by the heterogeneous amphiphilic interactions between natural and synthetic components. These emissive nanostructures can self-organize into chiral nematic solid-state materials with enhanced mechanical performance. The chiral CQDs/CNC films demonstrate an intense iridescent appearance superimposed with enhanced luminescence that is significantly higher than that for CQDs film and other reported CQDs/CNC films. Notably, characteristic fluorescent fingerprint signature is observed in the CQDs/CNC film, proving the well-defined chiral organization of CNC/CQDs. The chiral organization of CQDs provide the solid CQDs/CNC film with right-hand chiral fluorescence with an asymmetric factor of -0.2. Additionally, we developed a chemical 2D printing and patterning techniques to fabricate the fluorescent patterns, which can combine the high mechanical integrity and freestanding ability, as well as chiral nematic structure with light diffraction and emission.

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