Stable White Afterglow Along the Blackbody Radiation Line Enabled by Assisted Partial Phosphorescence Resonance Energy Transfer

Abstract

White afterglow is very appealing both in scenario-specific luminescence and background-free bio-imaging, while it is challenging to obtain stable white afterglow due to the difficulty in matching the emission lifetimes of complementary colors. It is reported here that assisted partial phosphorescence resonance energy transfer (ap-PRET) can be a very efficient way toward this goal. When a blue afterglow of energy donor with long lifetime is obtained in a polymeric network displaying phosphorescent clusterization-triggered emission (CTE), the network assisted partial phosphorescence resonance energy transfer (ap-PRET) between it and a yellow fluorescent acceptor would yields orange afterglow. Owing to the energy supply of the CTE network, the lifetime of the donors blue afterglow can be tuned close to that of the acceptors orange afterglow through ap-PRET in a wide donor to accepter ratios, and emissions ranging from the cold to warm white afterglows can be obtained. Amazingly, these white afterglows are along the blackbody radiation line in the CIE plot, disclosing the powerful ability of ap-PRET in generating desired white afterglows for applications in diversified luminescent scenarios.