LAUSR

Design and construction of new functionalized supramolecular coordination complexes (SCCs) via coordination-driven self-assembly strategy is greatly important in supramolecular chemistry and materials science. Herein, we present a family of well-defined metallacycles decorated with mesogenic forklike dendrons through the strategy of coordina-tion-driven self-assembly. Due to the existence of mesogenic forklike dendrons, the obtained metallacycles displayed the smectic A liquid crystal phase at room temperature while their precursors exhibited the rectangular columnar liq-uid crystal phase. Interestingly, by taking advantage of the electrostatic interactions between the positively charged metallacycle and the negatively charged heparin, the doping of heparin induced a significant change of the liquid crys-talline behaviors of metallacycles. More importantly, the prepared liquid-crystalline metallacycles could be further applied for holographic storage of colored images. Notably, the rhomboidal metallacycle and hexagonal metallacycle gave rise to different holographic performances although they featured a similar liquid crystal phase behavior. There-fore, this research not only provides the first successful example of supramolecular liquid-crystalline metallacycles for holographic storage of colored images but also opens a new door for supramolecular liquid-crystalline metallacycles towards the advanced optical applications.