Hybrid coordination-network-engineering for bridging cascaded channels to activate long persistent phosphorescence in the second biological window.

We present a novel “Top-down” strategy to design the long phosphorescent phosphors in the second biological transparency window via energy transfer. Inherence in this approach to material design involves an ingenious engineering for hybridizing the coordination networks of hosts, tailoring the topochemical configuration of dopants, and bridging a cascaded tunnel for transferring the persistent energy from traps, to sensitizers and then to acceptors. Another significance of this endeavour is to highlight a rational scheme for functionally important hosts and dopants, Cr/Nd co-doped Zn1−xCaxGa2O4 solid solutions. Such solid-solution is employed as an optimized host to take advantage of its characteristic trap site level to establish an electron reservoir and network parameters for the precipitation of activators Nd3+ and Cr3+. The results reveal that the strategy employed here has the great potential, as well as opens new opportunities for future new-wavelength, NIR phosphorescent phosphors fabrication with many potential multifunctional bio-imaging applications.