Trap-induced white circularly polarized persistent luminescence from a host-guest molecular system

Circularly polarized luminescence (CPL), which encodes non-replicable optical information in the characteristics of chirality, wavelength, and time, holds significant promise for advanced information technologies. However, effective strategies for systematically regulating multiple optical properties remain elusive. Herein, we report a general approach that imparts hour-level dual-band persistent luminescence to CPL materials through the introduction of trap states into an organic host-guest molecular system. The electrons released from traps repopulate both the singlet and triplet states of the chiral guest molecules, producing dual-band white circularly polarized persistent luminescence for 4 h at room temperature. Systematic characterization reveals that two different chiral configurations leave the trap depth basically unaltered, while conferring pronounced CPL activity on these composites with a maximum luminescence dissymmetry factor g_lum of 1.6 × 10^-3/-2.3 × 10^-3. Leveraging these characteristics, we present a proof-of-concept demonstration of warm-white circularly polarized persistent luminescence materials for Morse-code encryption and multimodal information storage.