Recent Progress in Inorganic Afterglow Materials: Mechanisms, Persistent Luminescent Properties, Modulating Methods, and Bioimaging Applications

Abstract Persistent luminescence (PL) is a distinctive optical phenomenon with long‐lasting afterglow emissions after the cessation of excitation, thus emerging huge prospects in the applications of anti‐counterfeiting, information or data storage, photocatalysis, sensing, and bioimaging. In this regard, it is of great importance to optimize the PL performance. Recently, no comprehensive literature review on inorganic persistent phosphors is reported to aid researchers in focusing on the systematic adjustment of afterglow properties based on reported progress made in recent ten years. Accordingly, the motivation of this work is to review the inorganic persistent phosphors that are of interest for the dopant and host selection criteria, the afterglow intensity, and multi‐color modulating methods, from the perspectives of composition optimization, defect engineering, and coordination environment of hosts. Then, X‐ray, light emitting diode (LED), ultraviolet (UV), and near‐infrared (NIR) excited PL imaging and multimodal imaging of persistent phosphors are introduced. Finally, the summary, challenge, outlook, and future development direction in this field are provided. With the profound influence of the afterglow materials, it is believed that this review will be a guideline for the design, synthesis, and optical performance optimization of persistent materials in the future.