Optical Signal Modulation in Photonic Waveguiding Heteroarchitectures with Continuously Variable Visible-To-Near-Infrared Emission Color.

Photonic circuit systems based on optical waveguiding heteroarchitectures have attracted considerable interest owing to their potential to overcome the speed limitation in electronic circuits by modulating the optical signal at the micro- or nanoscale. However, controlling the parameters, including the wavelength and polarization of the light outcoupling, as well as the sequence among different building blocks, remains a key issue. Herein, supramolecular heteroarchitectures made by phosphorescent organometallic complexes of Pt, Pd, Cu, and Au are applied as photonic logic gates that show continuously variable emission colors from 475 to 810 nm, low waveguide losses down to 0.0077 dB µm , and remarkable excitation-light polarization-dependent photoluminescence with anisotropy ratios up to 0.68. The sequences among Pt, Pd, Au, and Cu building blocks in the heteroarchitectures are controlled by living supramolecular polymerization or crystallization-driven self-assembly synthetic approaches. The results indicate the prospects for using organometallic complexes and supramolecular synthetic approaches to prepare photonic circuit systems with tunable emission color and controllable sequences among different blocks that achieve modulation of the optical signal in the visible-to-near-infrared spectral region.