Dual-State Emission (DSE) in Organic Fluorophores: Design and Applications

Organic luminescent materials have attracted significant attention in the past few years due to their fascinating photophysical properties. Implementing these emissive organic compounds is now being actively pursued in many applications in solution (i.e., sensors, bioimaging) or their solid forms (i.e., optoelectronic devices or data encryption). Despite significant advances in the development of emissive compounds, there has been an increasing quest in the past decade for materials where the emission is preserved in both states, dual-state emission (DSE). These compounds are expected to detonate a myriad of applications in the future. On this nascent topic, this work addresses several factors that increase the probability of obtaining the dual-state emission property based on the precedent reports showing this phenomenon. Therefore, this review identifies and organizes the different structural characteristics useful to obtain these compounds. In addition, it has been devised to motivate the discussion in the materials science community and hopefully incentivize the efforts of many research groups around the world toward the synthesis of new dual-state emitters.