Temporal Decoupling: A New Paradigm of 4D Photo-Responsive Carbon Dots Films With Modular Regulation of Color and...

To address the key bottlenecks of traditional photo-responsive 4D materials, namely the inability to achieve independent regulation of photoinduced deformation and multicolor fluorescence, and the insufficient security of encryption systems, this study takes naphthalimide-functionalized carbon dots (CDs) as the core functional unit, and for the first time proposes and verifies a novel energy regulation strategy using the long-lived S₁ transition as a "kinetic capacitor". This strategy enables dual-channel programmable shunting of excited-state energy: radiative relaxation for fluorescence emission, and non-radiative relaxation-generated photothermal effect for deformation driving. By adjusting the feeding ratio of triethanolamine to tune the HOMO-LUMO energy gap, multicolor fluorescence from blue to orange-red is achieved. On this basis, this study successfully constructs two independent regulation systems, including photothermally driven deformation and S₁ state energy level-tuned photo-responsive multicolor fluorescence, and fabricates 4D photo-responsive smart films with the characteristic of temporally decoupled integration of photo-responsive multicolor fluorescence and photoinduced deformation. Relying on the irreversible photo-response properties and the difference in photo-response time of the materials, a three-dimensional dynamic single-use anti-counterfeiting model is established, which provides a new approach for the modular design of 4D smart materials and their high-end anti-counterfeiting applications.