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Stable stimulus-responsive materials are highly desirable due to their widespread potential applications and growing demand in recent decades. Despite the fact that viologen derivatives have long been known as excellent photochromic and electrochromic materials, the development of stable viologen-based multifunctional smart materials with short coloration times remains an exciting topic. To obtain photochromic and electrochromic dual responsive materials, embedding the viologen ligand into a robust metal oxide cluster to increase its stability and sensitivity is an effective strategy. Herein, a viologen-based metal–organic polyhedron (MOP) Zr6L3 (μ3-O) 2 (μ2-OH) 6Cp6·8Cl·CH3OH·DMF Zr-MOP-1; H2L·2Cl = 1, 1′-bis (4-carboxyphenyl) -4, 4′-bipyridinium dichloride, and Cp = η5-C5H5 was successfully prepared and characterized. It consists of trinuclear Zr–oxygen secondary building units and exhibits reversible photochromic and electrochromic dual responsive behaviors. As expected, the designed robust viologen-based nanocage with a V2E3 (V = vertex, and E = edge) topology can maintain its stability and rapid photo/electrochromic behaviors with an obvious reversible change in color from purple (brown) to green, mainly due to the enclosed cluster structure and the abundant free viologen radicals that originate from the effective Cl → N and O → N electron transfers. Spectroelectrochemistry and theoretical calculations of this Zr-MOP were also performed to verify the chromic mechanism.
Luo et al. (Thu,) studied this question.