Packing-Dependent Mechanical Properties of Schiff Base Crystals
Linfeng Lan, Qi Di, Liang Li, Bin Liu, Xu Yu, Pancě Naumov, Hongyu Zhang
Abstract
Flexible luminescent crystals endowed with mechanical compliance are emerging as materials that could be the foundation of future lightweight single-crystal flexible optoelectronics. Multiple mechanical responses (for example, elastic and plastic deformation) are rarely observed with the same material among the reported examples of such materials. Here, we report a Schiff base, (Z)-3-(4-ethoxyphenyl)-2-(4-(((E)-2-hydroxy-5-methoxybenzylidene)amino)phenyl)acrylonitrile, which crystallizes as two polymorphs and one tetrahydrofuran solvate. All three forms are emissive, but they have different mechanical properties. Specifically, two of the forms that are unsolvated polymorphs (denoted A and B) were found to be brittle and plastic, respectively, while the third form, which is a solvate (denoted C), showed excellent elasticity. Notably, form C becomes plastic after the crystal is desolvated. Single-crystal X-ray diffraction (SCXRD) and mechanical testing were performed to obtain better insight into the root-cause for the observed difference in mechanical properties. Since crystals of forms B and C are mechanically compliant as well as optically transparent, they were tested as flexible single-crystal optical waveguides.