Functional organic room-temperature phosphorescent materials

Abstract

Organic room-temperature phosphorescence (RTP) materials are increasingly appearing in the research landscape for their comparative advantages over their conventional inorganic counterparts, such as their synthetic simplicity and lower toxicity. However, emerging applications are driving a demand for additional functionalities in RTP materials. As a result, recent research has exhibited the benefits of introducing intrinsic functions, such as flexibility, and transductive functions, such as X-ray scintillation, as a response to the increasing need to apply RTP materials within various fields. This review examines the recent progress of four such “functional” organic RTP materials in terms of their properties: flexible and stretchable; dynamic (e.g. mechanochromic); X-ray scintillating; and circularly polarizing. We discuss their properties and design strategies, studying recently reported literature, and their great potential for emerging real-world applications. While independent reviews on some of these functions have been reported, this article comprehensively examines the current state of research into this prominent class of materials, taking a more mechanism-forward approach. In addition, this article discusses future research directions that can mitigate the challenges associated with these materials. We find that, within the scope of organic RTP materials, polymeric materials may be the most facile strategy to achieve many of these properties and encourage applicability, albeit all organic materials still require further optimization to ensure that functionalization does not come at the cost of efficient RTP.