Glass Disorder Modulated Luminescence in Zero-Dimensional Antimony-Chloride Coplanar Dimers for Optical Anti-counterfeiting.

Zero-dimensional metal halides have received wide attention due to their structural diversity, strong quantum confinement, and associated excellent photoluminescence properties. A reversible and tunable luminescence would be desirable for applications such as anti-counterfeiting, information encryption, and artificial intelligence. Yet, these materials are underexplored, with little known about their luminescence tuning mechanisms. Here we report a pyramidal coplanar dimer, (TBA)SbCl (TBA = tetrabutylammonium), showing broadband emission wavelength tuning (585-650 nm) by simple thermal treatment. We attribute the broad color change to structural disorder induced by varying the heat treatment temperatures. Increasing the heating temperature transitions the material from long-range ordered crystalline phase to highly disordered glassy phase. The latter exhibits stronger electron-phonon coupling, enhancing the self-trapped exciton emission efficiency. The work provides a new material platform for manifold optical anti-counterfeiting applications and sheds light on the emission color tuning mechanisms for further design of stimuli-responsive materials.