Abstract
Great progress has been made in the development of various organic persistent luminescent (OPL) materials in the past few years, and increasing attention has been paid to their interesting applications in environmental sensing due to their long emission lifetimes and high sensitivity. Especially, the introduction of different halogen elements facilitates highly efficient OPL emission with distinct lifetimes and colours. In this review, we summarize the current status of the halide-containing OPL materials for environmental sensing applications. To begin with, the photophysical processes and luminescence mechanisms of OPL materials are expounded in detail to better understand the relationship among molecular structures, OPL properties, and sensing applications. Then, representative halide-containing material systems, such as small molecules, polymers, and doping systems, are summarized with their interesting applications in sensing temperature, oxygen, H2O, UV light and organic solvents. In addition, several challenges and future research opportunities in this field are discussed. This review aims to provide some reasonable guidance on the material design of OPL sensors and their practical applications, and tries to provide a new perspective on the application direction of organic optoelectronics.
Highlights
Long persistent luminescence, which can be captured by the naked eyes even a er removing the excitation light source, has received considerable attention in the applications of sensing, bioimaging, light emitting devices, and data encryption.[1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8] Compared with the traditional transition metal-based or rare earth-based persistent luminescent materials, organic persistent luminescent (OPL) materials have become the research focus in recent years (Scheme 1) due to their advantages of exible molecular design, easy synthesis, and low toxicity and production cost
Great progress has been made in the development of various organic persistent luminescent (OPL) materials in the past few years, and increasing attention has been paid to their interesting applications in environmental sensing due to their long emission lifetimes and high sensitivity
We summarize the current status of the development and sensing applications of halide-containing OPL materials, especially focusing on the superiority of these materials in environmental sensing, including the long emission lifetimes and high sensitivity
Summary
Long persistent luminescence, which can be captured by the naked eyes even a er removing the excitation light source, has received considerable attention in the applications of sensing, bioimaging, light emitting devices, and data encryption.[1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8] Compared with the traditional transition metal-based or rare earth-based persistent luminescent materials, organic persistent luminescent (OPL) materials have become the research focus in recent years (Scheme 1) due to their advantages of exible molecular design, easy synthesis, and low toxicity and production cost. Slight variations in the surrounding microenvironment of OPL luminophores may in uence these processes, leading to signi cant changes in the OPL emission intensity, colour, or lifetime. The stimulusresponsive characteristics indicate the great potential of OPL materials in environmental sensing, and the long lifetime characteristics amplify the response to external stimulation, increasing the sensitivity of OPL materials for sensing.[9,10]. Various methods have been developed to yield high-performance OPL materials, such as halogen substitution, crystallization, polymerization, host–guest doping and Scheme 1 Statistical number of annual publications in the field of OPL emission (keywords: organic persistent luminescence, organic afterglow, organic ultralong emission, organic persistent emission or organic ultralong luminescence, not pollutant) from 2000 to 2021, data extracted from Web of Science
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