Quantifying the interfacial triboelectricity in inorganic-organic composite mechanoluminescent materials.

Mechanoluminescence (ML) sensing technologies open up new opportunities for intelligent sensors, self-powered displays and wearable devices. However, the emission efficiency of ML materials reported so far still fails to meet the growing application requirements due to the insufficiently understood mechano-to-photon conversion mechanism. Herein, we propose to quantify the ability of different phases to gain or lose electrons under friction (defined as triboelectric series), and reveal that the inorganic-organic interfacial triboelectricity is a key factor in determining the ML in inorganic-organic composites. A positive correlation between the difference in triboelectric series and the ML intensity is established in a series of composites, and a 20-fold increase in ML intensity is finally obtained by selecting an appropriate inorganic-organic combination. The interfacial triboelectricity-regulated ML is further demonstrated in multi-interface systems that include an inorganic phosphor-organic matrix and organic matrix-force applicator interfaces, and again confirmed by self-oxidization and reduction of emission centers under continuous mechanical stimulus. This work not only gives direct experimental evidences for the underlying mechanism of ML, but also provides guidelines for rationally designing high-efficiency ML materials.

Enabling robust and hour-level organic long persistent luminescence from carbon dots by covalent fixation.

The first carbon dot (CD)-based organic long persistent luminescence (OLPL) system exhibiting more than 1 h of duration was developed. In contrast to the established OLPL systems, herein, the reported CDs-based system (named m-CDs@CA) can be facilely and effectively fabricated using a household microwave oven, and more impressively, its LPL can be observed under ambient conditions and even in aqueous media. XRD and TEM characterizations, afterglow decay, time-resolved spectroscopy, and ESR analysis were performed, showing the successful composition of CDs and CA, the formation of exciplexes and long-lived charged-separated states. Further studies suggest that the production of covalent bonds between CA and CDs plays pivotal roles in activating LPL and preventing its quenching from oxygen and water. To the best of our knowledge, this is a very rare example of an OLPL system that exhibits hour-level afterglow under ambient conditions. Finally, applications of m-CDs@CA in glow-in-the-dark paints for emergency signs and multicolored luminous pearls were preliminarily demonstrated. This work may provide new insights for the development of rare-earth-free and robust OLPL materials.

Blue, green, and red full-color ultralong afterglow in nitrogen-doped carbon dots.

Carbon dots (CDs) with tunable emission colors and multiple emission modes are highly desirable in advanced optical anti-counterfeiting. Some pioneering efforts to trigger additional long-lived emission modes, nevertheless, did not perfectly solve the issue of printability and color-tunability in practical applications. Herein, we developed an encapsulating-dissolving-recrystallization route for the synthesis of CD-based anti-counterfeiting inks, and accordingly realized blue, green, and red full-color afterglow emissions from these CD-based inks when printed on paper. The printed inks simultaneously possessed triple emission modes including fluorescence (FL), delayed fluorescence (DF), and room-temperature phosphorescence (RTP), among which the long-lived emissions (DF and RTP) could be selectively activated by using different excitation wavelengths. We believe that the proposed synthetic route in this work may promote the development of multicolor-encoded and multiple-mode-integrated optical anti-counterfeiting systems, and will expand the application of CD-based materials to the fields of sensing, photodynamic therapy and bio-imaging.