- Article
- Open access
- Published: 22 January 2026
Nature Communications , Article number: (2026) Cite this article
We are providing an unedited version of this manuscript to give early access to its findings. Before final publication, the manuscript will undergo further editing. Please note there may be errors present which affect the content, and all legal disclaimers apply.
Abstract
Organic molecular crystals with controllable bending angles are crucial interconnectors in integrated optoelectronic chips, which can precisely guide optical signals along a predetermined path to achieve effective optical path steering. Neverthel…
- Article
- Open access
- Published: 22 January 2026
Nature Communications , Article number: (2026) Cite this article
We are providing an unedited version of this manuscript to give early access to its findings. Before final publication, the manuscript will undergo further editing. Please note there may be errors present which affect the content, and all legal disclaimers apply.
Abstract
Organic molecular crystals with controllable bending angles are crucial interconnectors in integrated optoelectronic chips, which can precisely guide optical signals along a predetermined path to achieve effective optical path steering. Nevertheless, current methods of tailoring molecular crystals with desired bent geometric features yet without fractured bending interface has not yet been fully realized. Here, we addresses this issue by proposing a universal “molecular cocrystal” strategy that introduces directional charge-transfer non-covalent interactions into molecular systems to weaken the original interactions, thereby triggering the spontaneous deformation transition from crystal slippage to bending. Significantly, a diverse range of self-assembled bent crystals with accurate angles ranging from 61.8° to 85.0° have been synthesized without destroying the structural integrity of the crystals. The proposed strategy is also applied to construct hierarchical bent microstructures with 2 to 6 bends. These as-prepared bent crystals exhibit excitation position-dependent anisotropic optical behaviors, which are applied into the photonics switch with adjustable on/off ratio. This methodology offers a versatile pathway to purposely design bent crystals with tailored angles, thereby laying a structural foundation for the on-chip organic optoelectronics.
Data availability
All data generated in this study are provided in the paper or Supplementary Information. All data are available from the corresponding author upon request. The X-ray crystallographic coordinates for structures reported in this study have been deposited at the Cambridge Crystallographic Data Centre (CCDC), under deposition numbers: 2141808; 2288478; 2288480; 2288481; 2288619; 2288482; 2334148; 2288488; 2334145. These data can be obtained free of charge from The Cambridge Crystallographic Data Centre via www.ccdc.cam.ac.uk/data_request/cif.”
References
Mallada, B. et al. Real-space imaging of anisotropic charge of σ-hole by means of Kelvin probe force microscopy. Science, 374, 863–867 (2021).
Schreiner, P. R. et al. Overcoming lability of extremely long alkane carbon–carbon bonds through dispersion forces. Nature 477, 308–311 (2011).
Uraguchi, D., Ueki, Y. & Ooi, T. Chiral organic ion pair catalysts assembled through a hydrogen-bonding network. Science, 326, 120–123 (2009).
Lidzey, D. G. et al. Strong exciton–photon coupling in an organic semiconductor microcavity. Nature 395, 53–55 (1998).
Feng, J. et al. Single-crystalline layered metal-halide perovskite nanowires for ultrasensitive photodetectors. Nat. Electron. 1, 404–410 (2018).
Dodabalapur, A., Katz, H. E., Torsi, L. T. & Haddon, R. C. Organic heterostructure field-effect transistors. Science 269, 1560–1562 (1995).
Zaumseil, J. & Sirringhaus, H. Electron and ambipolar transport in organic field-effect transistors. Chem. Rev. 107, 1296–1323 (2007).
Matsushima, T. et al. High performance from extraordinarily thick organic light-emitting diodes. Nature 572, 502–506 (2023).
Baldo, M. A. et al. Highly efficient phosphorescent emission from organic electroluminescent devices. Nature 395, 151–154 (1998).
Jiang, Y. et al. Organic solid-state lasers: a materials view and future development. Chem. Soc. Rev. 49, 5885–5944 (2020).
Tang, X., Senevirathne, C. A. M., Matsushima, T., Sandanayaka, A. S. D. & Adachi, C. Progress and perspective toward continuous-wave organic solid-state lasers. Adv. Mater. 36, 2211873 (2024).
Rohullah, M. Pradeep, V. V., Singh, S. & Chandrasekar, R. Mechanically controlled multifaceted dynamic transformations in twisted organic crystal waveguides. Nat. Commun. 15, 4040 (2024). 1.
Lv, Q. et al. Lateral epitaxial growth of two-dimensional organic heterostructures. Nat. Chem. 16, 201–209 (2024).
Yang, X. et al. Remote and precise control over morphology and motion of organic crystals by using magnetic field. Nat. Commun. 13, 2322 (2022).
Atabaki, A. H. et al. Integrating photonics with silicon nanoelectronics for the next generation of systems on a chip. Nature 556, 349–354 (2018).
Liang, Y. et al. Molecular beam epitaxy and electronic structure of atomically thin oxyselenide films. Adv. Mater. 31, 1901964 (2019).
Tran, M. A. et al. Extending the spectrum of fully integrated photonics to submicrometre wavelengths. Nature 610, 54–60 (2022).
Lu, Z. et al. Optical waveguiding organic single crystals exhibiting physical and chemical bending features. Angew. Chem. Int. Ed. 58, 4299–4303 (2020).
Li, R. et al. Photonics for neuromorphic computing: fundamentals, devices, and opportunities. Adv. Mater. 37, 2312825 (2025).
Oki, O. et al. Synchronous assembly of chiral skeletal single-crystalline microvessels. Science 377, 673–678 (2022).
Catalano, L. et al. Dual-mode light transduction through a plastically bendable organic crystal as an optical waveguide. Angew. Chem. Int. Ed. 57, 17254–17258 (2018).
Gupta, P., Karothu, D. P., Ahmed, E., Naumov, P. & Nath, N. K. Thermally twistable, photobendable, elastically deformable, and self-healable soft crystals. Angew. Chem. Int. Ed. 130, 8634–8638 (2018).
Naumov, P., Chizhik, S., Panda, M. K., Nath, N. K. & Boldyreva, E. Mechanically responsive molecular crystals. Chem. Rev. 115, 12440–12490 (2015).
Kobatake, S., Takami, S., Muto, H., Ishikawa, T. & Irie, M. Rapid and reversible shape changes of molecular crystals on photoirradiation. Nature 446, 778–781 (2007).
Owczarek, M. et al. Flexible ferroelectric organic crystals. Nat. Commun. 7, 13108 (2016).
Takamizawa, S., Takasaki, Y., Sasaki, T. & Ozaki, N. Superplasticity in an organic crystal. Nat. Commun. 9, 3984 (2018).
Liu, G., Liu, J., Liu, Y. & Tao, X. Oriented single-crystal-to-single-crystal phase transition with dramatic changes in the dimensions of crystals. J. Am. Chem. Soc. 136, 590–593 (2014).
Garcia-Garibay, M. A. Molecular crystals on the move: from single-crystal-to-single-crystal photoreactions to molecular machinery. Angew. Chem. Int. Ed. 46, 8945–8947 (2007).
Panda, M. K. et al. Spatially resolved analysis of short-range structureperturbations in a plastically bent molecular crystal. Nat. Chem. 7, 65–72 (2015).
Ma, Y. X. & Wang, X. D. Directional self-assembly of organic vertically superposed nanowires. Nat. Commun. 15, 7706 (2024).
Ma, Y. X. et al. Oriented self-assembly of hierarchical branch organic crystals for asymmetric photonics. J. Am. Chem. Soc. 145, 9285–9291 (2023).
Zhao, S. et al. Programmable in-situ co-assembly of organic multi-block nanowires for cascade optical waveguides. Angew. Chem. Int. Ed. 63, e202412712 (2024).
Liu, Y. et al. Orientation-controlled 2D anisotropic and isotropic photon transport in co-crystal polymorph microplates. Angew. Chem. Int. Ed. 59, 4456–4463 (2020).
Krishna, G. R., Devarapalli, R., Lal, G. & Reddy, C. M. Mechanically flexible organic crystals achieved by introducing weak interactions in structure: supramolecular shape synthons. J. Am. Chem. Soc. 138, 13561–13567 (2016).
Lee, T., Charrault, E. & Neto, C. Interfacial slip on rough, patterned and soft surfaces: a review of experiments and simulations. Adv. Colloid. Interfac. 210, 21–38 (2014).
Das, S., Mondal, A. & Redd, C. M. Harnessing molecular rotations in plastic crystals: a holistic view for crystal engineering of adaptive soft materials. Chem. Soc. Rev. 49, 8878–8896 (2020).
Zhang, S., Chen, A., An, Y. & Li, Q. Arene-perfluoroarene interaction: Properties, constructions, and applications in materials science. Matter 7, 3317–3350 (2024).
Barthelat, F., Yin, Z. & Buehler, M. J. Structure and mechanics of interfaces in biological materials. Nat. Rev. Mater. 1, 16007 (2016).
Matsumoto, M., Saito, S. & Ohmine, I. Molecular dynamics simulation of the ice nucleation and growth process leading to water freezing. Nature 416, 409–413 (2002).
Ma, Y. X., Chen, S., Lin, H. T., Zhuo, S. P. & Wang, X. D. Organic low-dimensional crystals undergoing twinning deformation. Sci. Bull. 67, 1632–1635 (2022).
Sundar, V. C. et al. Elastomeric transistor stamps: reversible probing of charge transport in organic crystals. Science 303, 1644–1646 (2004).
Reese, C. & Bao, Z. High-resolution measurement of the anisotropy of charge transport in single crystal. Adv. Mater. 19, 4535–4538 (2007).
Lv, Z. J., Lv, Q., Feng, T. Z., Jiang, J. H. & Wang, X. D. Epitaxial growth of two-dimensional organic crystals with in-plane heterostructured domain regulation. J. Am. Chem. Soc. 146, 25755–25763 (2024).
Yu, Y. et al. Customizable organic charge-transfer cocrystals for the dual-mode optoelectronics in the NIR (II) window. J. Am. Chem. Soc. 146, 11845–11854 (2024).
Acknowledgements
The authors acknowledge the financial support from the National Natural Science Foundation of China (nos. 524B2169, 52473314, 22475122), the Natural Science Foundation of Jiangsu Province (no. BK20230010), and the Natural Science Foundation of Shandong Province (no. ZR2020MB054). Furthermore, this project is funded by the Collaborative Innovation Center of Suzhou Nano Science & Technology.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
School of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering, Shandong University of Technology, Zibo, Shandong, China
Ying-Xin Ma, Xin-Rui Mao, Jin Feng, Shu-Hai Chen & Hong-Tao Lin 1.
State Key Laboratory of Bioinspired Interfacial Materials Science, Institute of Functional Nano & Soft Materials (FUNSOM), Soochow University, Suzhou, Jiangsu, China
Ying-Xin Ma, Qiang Lv & Xue-Dong Wang 1.
College of Chemical and Biological Engineering, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou, Zhejiang, China
Guangtong Hai 1.
Suzhou Key Laboratory for Radiation Oncology, Department of Radiotherapy and Oncology, The Second Affiliated Hospital of Soochow University, Suzhou, Jiangsu, China
Li-Wei Xie 1.
Beijing Key Laboratory for Optical Materials and Photonic Devices, Department of Chemistry, Beijing Advanced Innovation Center for Imaging Theory and Technology, Capital Normal University, Beijing, China
Hongbing Fu
Authors
- Ying-Xin Ma
- Xin-Rui Mao
- Qiang Lv
- Jin Feng
- Shu-Hai Chen
- Guangtong Hai
- Hong-Tao Lin
- Li-Wei Xie
- Hongbing Fu
- Xue-Dong Wang
Contributions
X.-D. Wang, H. Fu, H.-T. Lin, and L.-W. Xie designed the experiments; Y.-X. Ma synthesized the organic crystals and performed the structural characterizations; X.-R. Mao and G. Hai calculated the growth processes of bent crystals; Q. Lv and J. Feng performed the optical characterizations; Y.-X. Ma, H.-T. Lin, S.-H. Chen, H. Fu, and X.-D. Wang discussed the results and wrote the paper, all authors discussed the results and commented on the manuscript.
Corresponding authors
Correspondence to Hong-Tao Lin, Li-Wei Xie, Hongbing Fu or Xue-Dong Wang.
Ethics declarations
Competing interests
The authors declare no competing interests.
Peer review
Peer review information
Nature Communications thanks Jiang Peng and the other, anonymous reviewer for their contribution to the peer review of this work. A peer review file is available.
Additional information
Publisher’s note Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.
Rights and permissions
Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License, which permits any non-commercial use, sharing, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if you modified the licensed material. You do not have permission under this licence to share adapted material derived from this article or parts of it. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/.
About this article
Cite this article
Ma, YX., Mao, XR., Lv, Q. et al. Vectorial noncovalent synthesis of bendable organic crystals through dynamic dislocation. Nat Commun (2026). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-026-68783-9
Received: 27 June 2025
Accepted: 16 January 2026
Published: 22 January 2026
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-026-68783-9