A chiral propeller-shaped triple helicene shows multi-resonant thermally activated delayed fluorescence

Multi-resonant thermally activated delayed fluorescence (MR-TADF) helicenes show great potential as chiral emitters due to their typically high photoluminescence quantum yield and that they emit circularly polarized luminescence. Here, a new propeller-shaped chiral MR-TADF helicene DiKTa3, integrating three DiKTa moieties, was designed and synthesized aiming to achieve co-parallel electronic and magnitude transition dipole moments that would lead to a high dissymmetry factor, g. It emits at PL of 491 nm, with a full width at half maximum of 52 nm and has a moderate EST value of 0.24 eV in toluene. The separated (P,P,P) enantiomer shows an absorption dissymmetry factor |gabs| of 6.8 × 10-4 at 450 nm, which results from a lower symmetry conformation adopted by the compound in solution than the C3-symmetric optimized structure. This work highlights the strong influence that geometry can have on the chiroptical properties of the emitter.