Ultraviolet irradiation-responsive dynamic ultralong organic phosphorescence in polymeric systems

Room temperature phosphorescence (RTP) has drawn extensive attention in recent years. Efficient stimulus-responsive phosphorescent organic materials are attractive, but are extremely rare because of unclear design principles and intrinsically spin-forbidden intersystem crossing. Herein, we present a feasible and facile strategy to achieve ultraviolet irradiation-responsive ultralong RTP (IRRTP) of some simple organic phosphors by doping into amorphous poly(vinyl alcohol) matrix. In addition to the observed green and yellow afterglow emission with distinct irradiation-enhanced phosphorescence, the phosphorescence lifetime can be tuned by varying the irradiation period of 254 nm light. Significantly, the dynamic phosphorescence lifetime could be increased 14.3 folds from 58.03 ms to 828.81 ms in one of the obtained hybrid films after irradiation for 45 min under ambient conditions. As such, the application in polychromatic screen printing and multilevel information encryption is demonstrated. The extraordinary IRRTP in the amorphous state endows these systems with a highly promising potential for smart flexible luminescent materials and sensors with dynamically controlled phosphorescence.