Mechanically Gated Formation of Donor–Acceptor Stenhouse Adducts Enabling Mechanochemical Multicolor Soft Lithography

Stress-sensitive molecules called mechanophores undergo productive chemical transformations in response to mechanical force. A variety of mechanochromic mechanophores, which change color in response to stress, have been developed, but modulating the properties of the dyes generally requires the independent preparation of discrete derivatives. Here we introduce a mechanophore platform enabling mechanically gated multicolor chromogenic reactivity. The mechanophore is based on an activated furan precursor to donor–acceptor Stenhouse adducts (DASAs) masked as a hetero-Diels–Alder adduct. Mechanochemical activation of the mechanophore unveils the DASA precursor and subsequent reaction with a secondary amine generates an intensely colored DASA. Critically, the properties of the DASA are controlled by the amine and thus a single mechanophore can be differentiated post-activation to produce a wide range of functionally diverse DASAs. We highlight this system by establishing the concept of mechanochemical multicolor soft lithography whereby a complex multicolor composite image is printed into a mechanochemically active elastomer through an iterative process of localized compression followed by reaction with different amines.