Room-Temperature Phosphorescent Organic-Doped Inorganic Frameworks Showing Wide-Range and Multicolor Long-Persistent Luminescence

Abstract

Long-persistent luminescence based on purely inorganic and/or organic compounds has recently attracted much attention in a wide variety of fields including illumination, biological imaging, and information safety. However, simultaneously tuning the static and dynamic afterglow performance still presents a challenge. In this work, we put forward a new route of organic-doped inorganic framework to achieve wide-range and multicolor ultralong room-temperature phosphorescence (RTP). Through a facile hydrothermal method, phosphor (tetrafluoroterephthalic acid (TFTPA)) into the CdCO3 (or Zn2(OH)2CO3) host matrix exhibits an excitation-dependent colorful RTP due to the formation of diverse molecular aggregations with multicentral luminescence. The RTP lifetime of the doped organic/inorganic hybrids is greatly enhanced (313 times) compared to the pristine TFTPA. The high RTP quantum yield (43.9%) and good stability guarantee their easy visualization in both ambient and extreme conditions (such as acidic/basic solutions and an oxygen environment). Further codoped inorganic ions (Mn2+ and Pb2+) afford the hybrid materials with a novel time-resolved tunable afterglow emission, and the excitation-dependent RTP color is highly adjustable from dark blue to red, covering nearly the whole visible spectrum and outperforming the current state-of-the-art RTP materials. Therefore, this work not only describes a combined codoping and multicentral strategy to obtain statically and dynamically tunable long-persistent luminescence but also provides great opportunity for the use of organic-inorganic hybrid materials in multilevel anticounterfeiting and multicolor display applications.