Zhang Baohua, Kong Yi, Liu Huijun, Chen Bin, Zhao Bolin, Luo Yelin, Chen Lijuan, Zhang Yuwei, Han Dongxue, Zhao Zujin, Tang Ben Zhong, Niu Li
Centre for Advanced Analytical Science, c/o School of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering, Guangzhou University, Guangzhou Key Laboratory of Sensing Materials & Devices Guangzhou 510006 P. R. China
State Key Laboratory of Luminescent Materials and Devices, Guangdong Provincial Key Laboratory of Luminescence from Molecular Aggregates, South China University of Technology Guangzhou 510640 China
Chem Sci. 2021 Sep 7;12(40):13283-13291. doi: 10.1039/d1sc02918e. eCollection 2021 Oct 20.
Due to overcoming the limitation of aggregation caused quenching (ACQ) of solid-state emitters, aggregation-induced emission (AIE) organic luminogens have become a promising candidate in aqueous electrochemiluminescence (ECL). However, restricted by the physical nature of fluorescence, current organic AIE luminogen-based ECL (AIECL) faces the bottleneck of low ECL efficiency. Here, we propose to construct aqueous ECL based on aggregation-induced delayed fluorescence (AIDF) luminogens, called AIDF-ECL. Compared with the previous organic AIE luminogens, purely organic AIDF luminogens integrate the superiorities of both AIE and the utilization of dark triplets thermal-activated spin up-conversion properties, thereby possessing the capability of close-to-unity exciton utilization for ECL. The results show that the ECL characteristics using AIDF luminogens are directly related to their AIDF properties. Compared with an AIECL control sample based on a tetraphenylethylene AIE moiety, the ECL efficiency of our AIDF-ECL model system is improved by 5.4 times, confirming the excellent effectiveness of this innovative strategy.
由于克服了固态发光体聚集诱导猝灭（ACQ）的限制，聚集诱导发光（AIE）有机发光剂已成为水性电化学发光（ECL）领域一个很有前景的候选材料。然而，受荧光物理性质的限制，目前基于有机AIE发光剂的ECL（AIECL）面临着ECL效率低的瓶颈。在此，我们提出构建基于聚集诱导延迟荧光（AIDF）发光剂的水性ECL，即AIDF-ECL。与之前的有机AIE发光剂相比，纯有机AIDF发光剂兼具AIE以及利用暗三重态热激活自旋上转换特性的优势，从而具备用于ECL的接近单位激子利用率的能力。结果表明，使用AIDF发光剂的ECL特性与其AIDF性质直接相关。与基于四苯基乙烯AIE部分的AIECL对照样品相比，我们的AIDF-ECL模型体系的ECL效率提高了5.4倍，证实了这种创新策略的卓越有效性。
