Full-color, time-valve controllable and Janus-type long-persistent luminescence from all-inorganic halide perovskites

Abstract Long persistent luminescence (LPL) has gained considerable attention for the applications in decoration, emergency signage, information encryption and biomedicine. However, recently developed LPL materials – encompassing inorganics, organics and inorganic-organic hybrids – often display monochromatic afterglow with limited functionality. Furthermore, triplet exciton-based phosphors are prone to thermal quenching, significantly restricting their high emission efficiency. Here, we show a straightforward wet-chemistry approach for fabricating multimode LPL materials by introducing both anion (Br − ) and cation (Sn 2+ ) doping into hexagonal CsCdCl 3 all-inorganic perovskites. This process involves establishing new trapping centers from [CdCl 6-n Br n ] 4− and/or [Sn 2-n Cd n Cl 9 ] 5− linker units, disrupting the local symmetry in the host framework. These halide perovskites demonstrate afterglow duration time ( > 2,000 s), nearly full-color coverage, high photoluminescence quantum yield ( ~ 84.47%), and the anti-thermal quenching temperature up to 377 K. Particularly, CsCdCl 3 : x %Br display temperature-dependent LPL and time-valve controllable time-dependent luminescence, while CsCdCl 3 : x %Sn exhibit forward and reverse excitation-dependent Janus-type luminescence. Combining both experimental and computational studies, this finding not only introduces a local-symmetry breaking strategy for simultaneously enhancing afterglow lifetime and efficiency, but also provides new insights into the multimode LPL materials with dynamic tunability for applications in luminescence, photonics, high-security anti-counterfeiting and information storage.