Two-Component Design Strategy: Achieving Intense Organic Afterglow and Diverse Functions in Coronene-Matrix Systems

A two-component design strategy developed by us and other research groups, where a second component is used to control the triplet excited state properties of the luminescent component (the first component), has been shown to allow a flexible choice of building blocks to prepare high-performance afterglow materials with intriguing properties. Here, we report the realization of intense organic afterglow and diverse functions by extending this two-component strategy to dopant-matrix systems, which feature small kF, small kP, and very small knr + kq. With coronene molecules and deuterated coronene being fixed as luminescent dopants, variation of organic matrices reveals that either small-molecule organic matrices or polymeric matrices can be used to accommodate coronene molecules and largely reduce knr + kq values, leading to the emergence of very bright organic afterglow at ambient conditions. The obtained coronene-matrix materials have been found to be readily processed into desired shapes, large-area thin films, and aqueous afterglow dispersions by melt casting and other techniques, function as efficient afterglow donors for the fabrication of red afterglow materials, and exhibit promising time-gated bioimaging functionality to avoid interference from strong fluorescence backgrounds.