Colorful ultralong room-temperature phosphorescence in dual-ligand metal-organic framework

Long afterglow organic-inorganic hybrid materials have attracted much attention in recent years and are widely used in information security, biological imaging and many other fields. Since up-conversion long-persistence materials are promising for bio-optical imaging due to their high penetration depth and elimination of autofluorescence background, it is highly desirable to combine down-conversion and up-conversion pathways to obtain smart materials with excitation-dependent tunable room-temperature phosphorescence properties. In this work, a metal-organic framework (Zn-DCPS-BIMB), consisting of diva -lent zinc ions, o-bis(imidazol-1-ylmethyl)benzene and 4,4 '-dicarboxydiphenylsulfone, is designed to sta-bilize triplet excitons, coordinate the emission of different ligands, and endow materials with tunable emission color and up-conversion properties via heavy atoms effects promoting single-triplet orbital cou-pling and intersystem crossing.(c) 2023 Published by Elsevier B.V. on behalf of Chinese Chemical Society and Institute of Materia Medica, Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences.