Advances in helicene derivatives with circularly polarized luminescence

Chiral materials have been widely present in people's lives, and their in-depth application research is underway. Generally, the circularly polarized light obtained from nonpolarized light through filters would result in brightness loss. Scientists have found that chirality can be introduced into organic compounds to obtain circularly polarized luminescence (CPL). Chiral compounds with CPL properties have attracted great attention and interest in recent years for their wide potential applications in 3D information displays, quantum communication, spintronics information storage, CPL lasers, nonlinear optics, biological probes and other fields. It is worth noting that helicene derivatives with twisted extended p-conjugated molecular structures could exhibit special helical chirality and excellent CPL properties. A chiral helix has also proven to be a valuable structural design for exploring small organic molecules with CPL. This review summarizes the recent development of CPL based on helicene derivatives.