Color-Tunable, Excitation-Dependent, and Time-Dependent Afterglows from Pure Organic Amorphous Polymers

Abstract

Achieving persistent room-temperature phosphorescence (p-RTP), particularly those of tunable full-colors, from pure organic amorphous polymers is attractive but challenging. Particularly, those with tunable multicolor p-RTP in response to excitation wavelength and time are highly important but both fundamentally and technically underexplored. Here, a facile and general strategy toward color-tunable p-RTP from blue to orange-red based on amidation grafting of luminophores onto sodium alginate (SA) chains, resulting in amorphous polymers with distinct p-RTP and even impressively excitation-dependent and time-dependent afterglows is reported. p-RTP is associated with the unique semi-rigidified SA chains, effective hydrogen bonding network, and oxygen barrier properties of SA, whereas excitation-dependent and time-dependent afterglows should stem from the formation of diversified p-RTP emissive species with comparable but different lifetimes. These results outline a rational strategy toward amorphous smart luminophores with colorful, excitation-dependent, and time-dependent p-RTP, excellent solution processability, and film-forming ability for versatile applications.

Keywords: amorphous polymers; excitation-dependent afterglows; film-forming ability; persistent room-temperature phosphorescence; time-dependent afterglows.