Helical Photonic Confinement of Metal Clusters Enables Switching and Imaging of Near‐Infrared Circularly Polarized Light

Abstract

ABSTRACT Near‐infrared (NIR) circularly polarized luminescent (CPL) materials are highly desirable for optical communication, bioimaging, night‐vision applications, and chiral encrypted information transfer, yet their practical use is limited by extremely low luminescence asymmetry factors ( g lum ). Here, we establish a helical photonic confinement strategy by embedding NIR‐emissive Au 13 nanoclusters into chiral nematic mesoporous silica (CNMS). Precise matching between the chiral photonic bandgap and cluster emission yields strongly enhanced NIR‐CPL with a g lum of −0.4, enabling direct discrimination of left‐ and right‐handed circularly polarized emission in the NIR region. This system realizes the first high‐contrast, CPL‐resolved near‐infrared (night‐vision) imaging based on intrinsic cluster emission, without external polarization optics. The Au 13 clusters undergo reversible assembly‐disassembly within helical nanochannels, allowing controllable NIR‐CPL switching and handedness inversion. Mechanistic studies confirm that the CPL enhancement originates from chiral photonic propagation modulation rather than intrinsic emitter chirality. This helical‐confinement principle is extendable to multicolor metal clusters, offering a general route toward high‐efficiency CPL materials.