Guo Jiaqi, Lu Zhangdi, Li Chenmin, Miao Yuming, Zhang Bingbing, Lam Jacky W Y, Shi Yu-E, Wang Zhenguang, Tang Ben Zhong
Key Laboratory of Chemical Biology of Hebei Province Key Laboratory of Medicinal Chemistry and Molecular Diagnosis, Ministry of Education College of Chemistry & Environmental Science, Hebei University, Baoding, 071002, China.
Department of Chemistry, Hong Kong Branch of Chinese National Engineering Research Center for Tissue Restoration and Reconstruction and Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Joint Laboratory of Optoelectronic and Magnetic Functional Materials, The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, Kowloon, Hong Kong 999077, China.
ACS Omega. 2022 Aug 20;7(34):30582-30589. doi: 10.1021/acsomega.2c04307. eCollection 2022 Aug 30.
Elemental sulfur is not traditionally considered as an afterglow material, even though it can be endowed with fluorescence properties through processing it into nanodots. Herein, we discovered that elemental sulfur powder could emit room temperature phosphorescence (RTP) with a lifetime of 3.7 ms. A long-lived (>12 s) afterglow emission at 77 K could also be observed by the naked eye. Detailed investigations suggested that such a special phenomenon was attributed to impurity-related traps coupled with conduction and valence bands. After the sulfur is processed into nanodots, the rigid environment formed by the cross-linking of the surface ligands could stabilize the excited charges from quenching. This results in the promotion of RTP intensity and lifetime to achieve an emission lifetime of 200 ms. These results confirm the unique RTP of elemental sulfur powder, and also suggest the potential of sulfur-based materials as versatile components for the development of RTP materials.
传统上，元素硫不被视为余辉材料，尽管通过将其加工成纳米点可以赋予其荧光特性。在此，我们发现元素硫粉末能够发射室温磷光（RTP），其寿命为3.7毫秒。在77K时，肉眼也能观察到寿命长达12秒以上的余辉发射。详细研究表明，这种特殊现象归因于与杂质相关的陷阱以及导带和价带。将硫加工成纳米点后，表面配体交联形成的刚性环境可以稳定激发电荷，防止其猝灭。这导致RTP强度和寿命得到提升，实现了200毫秒的发射寿命。这些结果证实了元素硫粉末独特的RTP特性，也表明硫基材料作为RTP材料开发的通用组件具有潜力。
