A joint research group led by Ryusei Oketani (The University of Osaka, Publicly Offered Research C) and Hikaru Sotome (The University of Osaka, Grant-in-Aid for Transformative Research Areas (A) “Materials Science of Meso-Hierarchy”) has found that applying pressure to crystals of a slender phenacene derivative enhances the emission and shifts the emission peak markedly to longer wavelengths. The pressure sensitivity of the emission wavelength reached 37.4 nm/GPa, the highest value reported so far for a molecular material. Because the emission is governed by changes in molecular packing within the crystal rather than by the molecules themselves, applying the same principle to chiral crystals should allow chiral molecular arrangements and their optical responses to be tuned continuously by pressure, opening the way to developments in chiral photo-material science such as highly sensitive pressure tuning of circularly polarized luminescence.
This research was published online in Journal of Materials Chemistry C on August 20, 2026.

https://doi.org/10.1039/D6TC01401A