Helical coassembly enables full-color efficient circularly polarized light emission from carbon dots with high dissymmetry factors

Printing materials with circularly polarized light (CPL) emission holds promise for flexible stereoscopic displays and multilevel anticounterfeiting solutions. However, a key challenge lies in developing printable CPL materials that exhibit both high photoluminescence quantum yield (PLQY) and luminescence dissymmetry factor (<i>g</i>_lum) values. In this study, we present the macroscopic and controllable production of efficient full-color CPL carbon dot (CDs) photonic paint materials. These printable CPL materials, consisting of heavy metal-free CDs as emitters, and liquid crystals as host matrices, are produced using a helical coassembly strategy. Our CPL systems based on CDs achieve high PLQY (more than 80%) and <i>g</i>_lum values (more than 1.4), with a figure of merit (a key performance indicator for CPL properties calculated by multiplying PLQY and glum) of 1.12, outperforming other CPL material systems. Furthermore, the full-color CDs-CPL is successfully used for printing flexible circularly polarized luminous patterns and multilevel anticounterfeiting features. This research provides insights into advanced CPL materials, highlighting their broad potential applications.