Cruz, Carlos MMárquez, Irene RMariz, Inês F ABlanco, VictorSánchez-Sánchez, CarlosSobrado, Jesús MMartín-Gago, José ACuerva, Juan MMaçôas, ErmelindaCampaña, Araceli G2025-01-072025-01-072018-03-142041-6520https://hdl.handle.net/10668/25623Herein we describe a distorted ribbon-shaped nanographene exhibiting unprecedented combination of optical properties in graphene-related materials, namely upconversion based on two-photon absorption (TPA-UC) together with circularly polarized luminescence (CPL). The compound is a graphene molecule of ca. 2 nm length and 1 nm width with edge defects that promote the distortion of the otherwise planar lattice. The edge defects are an aromatic saddle-shaped ketone unit and a [5]carbohelicene moiety. This system is shown to combine two-photon absorption and circularly polarized luminescence and a remarkably long emission lifetime of 21.5 ns. The [5]helicene is responsible for the chiroptical activity while the push-pull geometry and the extended network of sp2 carbons are factors favoring the nonlinear absorption. Electronic structure theoretical calculations support the interpretation of the results.enAttribution-NonCommercial 4.0 Internationalhttp://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/research article29780523open access10.1039/c8sc00427gPMC5934837https://pubs.rsc.org/en/content/articlepdf/2018/sc/c8sc00427ghttps://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC5934837/pdf