Issue 19, 2019

Direct population of triplet excited states through singlet–triplet transition for visible-light excitable organic afterglow

Abstract

Invoking efficient afterglow in metal-free organic molecules represents an important material advancement. However, organic afterglow suffers from low intensity and efficiency and generally needs to be excited by UV light owing to its spin-forbidden phosphorescent nature that essentially requires facile intersystem crossing (ISC). Here, we propose a strategy to bypass the traditional ISC through facilitating singlet–triplet transition to directly populate triplet excited states from the ground state by combining synergetic effects of both heavy/hetero-atom incorporation and aromatic aggregation. Verified by systematic experimental and computational investigations, this unique singlet-to-triplet absorption results in a much improved organic afterglow quantum efficiency up to 9.5% with a prolonged lifetime of 0.25 s under visible-light irradiation. Fundamentally, this work illustrates for the first time the great potential of the direct population method to red-shift the excitation wavelength and improve the afterglow efficiency, offering important clues for the development of triplet-state involved organic optoelectronic technologies.

Graphical abstract: Direct population of triplet excited states through singlet–triplet transition for visible-light excitable organic afterglow

Supplementary files

Article information

Article type
Edge Article
Submitted
21 Nov 2018
Accepted
08 Apr 2019
First published
09 Apr 2019
This article is Open Access

All publication charges for this article have been paid for by the Royal Society of Chemistry
Creative Commons BY license

Chem. Sci., 2019,10, 5031-5038

Direct population of triplet excited states through singlet–triplet transition for visible-light excitable organic afterglow

J. Yuan, R. Chen, X. Tang, Y. Tao, S. Xu, L. Jin, C. Chen, X. Zhou, C. Zheng and W. Huang, Chem. Sci., 2019, 10, 5031 DOI: 10.1039/C8SC05198D

This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported Licence. You can use material from this article in other publications without requesting further permissions from the RSC, provided that the correct acknowledgement is given.

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