Mechanically Induced Shaping of Organic Single Crystals: Facile Fabrication of Fluorescent and Elastic Crystal Fibers

Mechanically induced shaping (i.e., top-down processing) of organic single crystals is an undeveloped area of research because applying stress to such nonflexible crystalline materials generally causes them to disintegrate. Herein, we present a mechanically induced splitting phenomenon of elastic organic single crystals, and study on a facile shaping processing method of centimeter-scale elastic organic single crystal of fluorescent pi-conjugated molecule into various fine crystal fibers (thickness: approximate to 50 mu m; width: approximate to 150 mu m; length: approximate to 25mm). The fibers produced maintained their original crystal structure and properties (i.e., fluorescence efficiency and elastic flexibility).