Facile tuning of photophysical properties is highly desirable for boosting the performance
and versatility of photoluminescent materials. In an attempt to overcome the challenge of
achieving the photoswitching of multicolor luminescence on unimolecular platforms, we here
report a novel hierarchical self-assembly of a cyanostilbene–naphthalimide dyad as the
realization of phototunable luminescence at the unimolecular level. The work takes
advantage of the photoisomerization of the cyanostilbene moiety from the Z form to its E …