Wide-range lifetime-tunable and responsive ultralong organic phosphorescent multi-host/guest system

• Published in: Nature communications Vol. 12; no. 1; p. 3522
• Main Authors: Xie, Zongliang, Zhang, Xiayu, Wang, Hailan, Huang, Cheng, Sun, Haodong, Dong, Mengyang, Ji, Lei, An, Zhongfu, Yu, Tao, Huang, Wei
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: London Nature Publishing Group UK 10-06-2021; Nature Publishing Group; Nature Portfolio
• Subjects: 639/301/1005/1008; 639/301/1019; Emitters; Energy; Energy levels; Excitons; Humanities and Social Sciences; Humidity; Laboratories; Lifetime; Molecular structure; multidisciplinary; Phosphorescence; Room temperature; Science; Science (multidisciplinary); Temperature dependence; Thermal properties; Thermodynamic properties; Tuning
• ISSN: 2041-1723; 2041-1723
• DOI: 10.1038/s41467-021-23742-4

The rational lifetime-tuning strategy of ultralong organic phosphorescence is extraordinarily important but seldom reported. Herein, a series of multi-host/guest ultralong organic phosphorescence materials with dynamic lifetime-tuning properties were reported. By doping a non-room-temperature phosphorescence emitter into various solid host matrices with continuously reduced triplet energy levels, a wide-range lifetime (from 3.9 ms gradually to 376.9 ms) phosphorescence with unchangeable afterglow colors were realized. Further studies revealed that the host matrices were employed to afford rigid environment and proper energy levels to generate and stabilize the long-live triplet excitons. Meanwhile, these multi-host/guest ultralong organic phosphorescence materials also exhibited excitation-dependent phosphorescence and temperature-controlled afterglow on/off switching properties, according to the virtue of various photophysical and thermal properties of the host matrices. This work provides a guiding strategy to realize lifetime-tuning ultralong organic phosphorescence with lifetime-order encoding characteristic towards widespread applications in time-resolved information displaying, higher-level security protection, and dynamic multi-dimensional anti-counterfeiting.
Though high efficiency has been realized for ultralong organic phosphorescence (UOP) materials, realizing wide ranging and tunable lifetime in these materials remains a challenge. Here, the authors report a multi-host/guest UOP system with wide-ranging tunable lifetime via changing the host matrix.