Organic Nanocrystals with Bright Red Persistent Room‐Temperature Phosphorescence for Biological Applications

Persistent room-temperature phosphorescence (RTP) in pure organic materials has attracted great attention due to their unique optical properties. The design of organic materials with bright and red persistent RTP remains challenging. Herein, we report a new design strategy for realizing high brightness and long lifetime of red-emissive RTP molecules, which is based on introducing an alkoxy spacer between the hybrid units in the molecule. The spacer offers easy Br-H bond formation during crystallization, which also facilitates intermolecular electron coupling to favor persistent RTP. As majority of the RTP compounds have to be confined in a rigid environment in order to quench non-radiative relaxation pathways for bright phosphorescence emission, nanocrystallization is used not only to rigidify the molecules, but also to offer the desirable size and water-dispersity for biomedical applications.