Photodeformable materials are a class of molecules that can convert photon energy into mechanical energy, which have attracted tremendous attention in the last few decades. Owing to their unique photoinduced deformable properties, including fast light-response and diverse mechanical behaviors, photodeformable materials have exhibited great potential in many practical applications such as actuators, photoswitches, artificial muscles, and bioimaging. In this review, we sort out the current state of photodeformable crystals and classify them into six categories by molecular structures: diarylethenes, azobenzenes, anthracenes, olefins, triarylethylenes, and other systems. Three distinct light-responsive mechanisms, photocyclization, trans-cis isomerization, and photodimerization, are revealed to play significant roles in the molecular photodeformation. Their corresponding photodeformable behaviors such as twisting, bending, hopping, bursting, and curling, as well as the potential applications, are also discussed. Furthermore, the challenges and prospective development directions of photodeformable crystals are highlighted.
Photoresponsive materials have been widely used in sensing, bioimaging, molecular switches, information storage, and encryption nowadays. Although a large amount of photoresponsive materials have been reported, the construction of these smart materials into precisely prescribed complex 3D geometries is rarely studied. Here we designed a novel photoresponsive material methyl methacrylate containing triphenylethylene (TrPEF2-MA) that can be directly used for digital light processing (DLP) 3D printing. Based on TrPEF2-MA, a series of photoresponsive 3D structures with reversible color switching under ultraviolet/visible light irradiations were fabricated. These complex photoresponsive 3D structures show high resolutions (50 μm), excellent repeatability (25 cycles without fatigue), and tunable saturate color degrees. Multicomponent DLP 3D printing processes were also carried out to demonstrate their great properties in information hiding and information-carrying properties. This design strategy for constructing photoresponsive 3D structures is attractive in the area of adaptive camouflage, information hiding, information storage, and flexible electronics.
Most room-temperature phosphorescence (RTP) pure organic materials possess heteroatoms with lone-pair electrons or boron atoms with empty p-orbitals leading to an accelerated kisc. In this work, we present a strategy...
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