In the field of molecular assembly, photodriven self-assembly is a smart and crucial strategy to regulate the molecular orderliness, multiscale structure, and optoelectronic properties. Traditionally, photodriven self-assembly is based on photochemical processes, through molecular structural change induced by photoreactions. Despite great progress in the photochemical self-assembly, there still exists disadvantages (e.g., the photoconversion rate never reaches 100% with the possible side reactions). Therefore, the photoinduced nanostructure and morphology are often difficult to predict due to insufficient phase transition or defects. In contrast, the physical processes based on photoexcitation are straightforward and can fully utilize photons to avoid the drawbacks of photochemistry. The photoexcitation strategy excludes the change of molecular structure, only utilizing the molecular conformational change from the ground state to excited state. Then, the excited state conformation is employed to drive molecular movement and aggregation, further promoting the synergistic assembly or phase transition of the entire material system. The regulation and exploration of molecular assembly upon photoexcitation can open up a new paradigm to deal with the “bottom-up” behavior and develop unprecedented optoelectronic functional materials.

中文翻译：

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光激发诱导组装：驱动分子运动和相演化的自下而上的物理策略

在分子组装领域，光驱动自组装是调节分子有序性、多尺度结构和光电特性的一种智能且至关重要的策略。传统上，光驱动自组装基于光化学过程，通过光反应引起的分子结构变化。尽管光化学自组装取得了很大进展，但仍然存在缺点（例如，光转化率永远不会达到 100%，可能会发生副反应）。因此，由于不充分的相变或缺陷，光致纳米结构和形态通常难以预测。相比之下，基于光激发的物理过程简单直接，可以充分利用光子，避免光化学的弊端。光激发策略排除了分子结构的变化，仅利用分子构象从基态到激发态的变化。然后，利用激发态构象驱动分子运动和聚集，进一步促进整个材料体系的协同组装或相变。