The studies on artificial molecular machines/devices and the control of their mechanical motions have attracted significant interest in the recent decades, which displayed promising potential in materials and biological applications [
1-
4]. To date, a variety of molecular machines/devices based on chemical structures, such as rotaxanes, catenanes and molecular knots, have been built [
5-
7], which underwent mechanical motions in response to external stimuli, including light [
8,
9], temperature [
10-
12], pH [
13], redox [
14,
15] and chemical additives [
16,
17]. On the other hand, chirality is a fundamental property of nature [
18,
19], and the regulation of molecular chirality is playing more and more important roles in asymmetric catalysis [
20], material science [
21], biology and medicine science [
22]. Chiral molecular devices often show circular dichroism (CD) spectral responses, which have significant advantages of allowing for distinctively determining mechanical motions on the basis of the sign of CD spectra over the intensity-based absorptive or emissive detection [
23,
24]. Recently, bicyclic pillar[
n]arene derivatives, in which a subring is fused in one hydroquinone unit, has attracted great attention [
25,
26]. We defined these type of bicyclic compounds as molecular universal joints (MUJs) due to the subring's flexible rolling in/out property [
27]. Such pillar[
n]arene-based bicyclic structure has been demonstrated to undergo self-included/excluded conformational change, accompanying by the chirality switching of the pillar[
n]arene core upon the variation of solvent, ion, and pH [
28-
31]. We have recently reported a series of MUJs showing chirality switching induced by stimuli, including temperature [
32], pressure [
33], redox [
34] or light [
35]. In these cases, the subring was often regarded as a guest for the pillar[
n]arene and exerting external stimulus which resulted in the change of host-guest binding properties of the pillar[
n]arene was mainly responsible for rolling in/out of the subring. Cooperative complexation of a guest by the pillar[
n]arene cavity and the subring to regulate mechanical motions accompanying with chirality switching has been rarely reported, as simultaneously manipulating two active site in a single molecule to interact with a guest is challenging despite that such phenomena are widespread in biological systems [
36]. Wen and coworkers reported that the two macrocyclic rings of crown ether-fused pillar[5]arene could individually complex guests, but first complexation showed a negative effect towards the second complexation [
37]. Lee and coworkers reported a pillar[5]thiacrown whose planar chiral inversion was driven by a Hg
2+ with rolling-out mechanical motion of a self-included subring upon complexation of Hg
2+ [
38]. Herein, we report a cation triggered rolling-in mechanical motion of a subring with significant chiroptical switching in crown ether-fused
MUJs by synergisticly stepwise complexing the cation by two macro rings of the
MUJs.