Highly Emissive Perylene Diimide-Based Metallacages and Their Host–Guest Chemistry for Information Encryption

Here we report two highly emissive perylene diimide (PDI)-based metallacages and explore their complexation with polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, such as pyrene, triphenylene, and perylene. The fluorescence quantum yields of metallacages exceed 90% and their binding constants with perylene can reach as high as 2.41 × 104 M–1 in acetonitrile. These features enable further tuning of the emission of the host–guest complexes to obtain white-light emission based on the complementary orange emission of the metallacages and the blue emission of perylene. Moreover, owing to the huge differences of their quantum yields in solution and in the solid state, the host–guest complexes are successfully employed for information encryption. This study offers a general approach for the construction of emissive metallacages and explores their application for information encryption.