Multiple degrees of freedom photoprogramming of soft helical microstructures featuring copper-gated photoswitch

Dynamic photoprogramming of soft helical microstructures with unique photonic attributes allows for optical calculator, information encoding, and planar optical devices. However, achieving the highly desirable multiple degrees of freedom (DOFs)-like wavelength and photonic band is still a long-standing challenge. Herein, we introduce an intrinsically chiral copper-gated photoswitch to develop dynamic photoprogramming of liquid-crystal helical microstructures, achieving multiple optical DOFs including wavelength and the manipulable range of photonic bands and photoswitch-induced fluorescence intensity, along with excellent thermal stability and robust fatigue resistance. These unique characteristics stem from the ingenious coupling of molecular chirality fluctuations and the copper-gated effect with light irradiation, which has been developed to bridge the molecular and wavelength scales. Such an elegant photoprogrammable microstructure promotes optical information processing, including a photorewritable logic calculator and adaptive camouflage framework. The multiple DOFs photo programming with a copper-gated photoswitch paves a promising avenue toward non-contactable, stimuli-activated soft helical microstructures, especially for smart responsive materials and soft condensed physics.