Persistent Luminescence and Applications of Molecular Materials and Their Hybrids

Organic persistent luminescent materials, namely afterglow materials, have received widespread attention due to their excellent optical properties and tunable structures. According to the different luminescence mechanisms, afterglow can be divided into room temperature phosphorescence (RTP), thermal activation delayed luminescence (TADF), and organic long persistent luminescence (OLPL). To achieve high-performance persistence luminescence, researchers have developed a series of effective strategies in the past decade, including the construction of noncovalent interactions, covalent crosslinking, energy transfer, charge transfer, and so on. With the assistance of the above approaches, many high-performance organic afterglow materials have been reported, including small molecules, polymers, supramolecules, carbon dots, and organic–inorganic hybrid systems. In this chapter, we first briefly introduce the mechanism of RTP, TADF, and OLPL for afterglow emission. Then molecular design strategies and afterglow performance are highly emphasized. Subsequently, the potential application of afterglow materials in the fields of information encryption, afterglow display, sensing, afterglow organic light-emitting diodes (OLED), X-ray detection, and biological imaging are summarized. Finally, we give an outlook for precisely developing afterglow materials, controllably tuning persistent luminescence and widely exploring the promise applications, which will provide useful guidance for the future development of organic persistent luminescence.