Nonvolatile liquid anthracenes for facile full-colour luminescence tuning at single blue-light excitation

Möhwald, H; Nakanishi, T; Hagiwara, K; Yoshizawa, M; Babu, SS; Hollamby, MJ; Aimi, J; Ozawa, H; Saeki, A; Seki, S; Kobayashi, K

Abstract

Nonvolatile room-temperature luminescent molecular liquids are a new generation of organic soft materials. They possess high stability, versatile optical properties, solvent-free fluid behaviour and can effectively accommodate dopant dye molecules. Here we introduce an approach to optimize anthracene-based liquid materials, focussing on enhanced stability, fluorescence quantum yield, colour tunability and processability, with a view to flexible electronic applications. Enveloping the anthracene core in low-viscosity branched aliphatic chains results in stable, nonvolatile, emissive liquid materials. Up to 96% efficient energy-transfer-assisted tunable emission is achieved by doping a minute amount of acceptor dye in the solvent-free state. Furthermore, we use a thermoresponsive dopant to impart thermally controllable luminescence colours. The introduced strategy leading to diverse luminescence colours at a single blue-light excitation can be an innovative replacement for currently used luminescent materials, providing useful continuous emissive layers in developing foldable devices.

Citation

Möhwald, H., Nakanishi, T., Hagiwara, K., Yoshizawa, M., Babu, S., Hollamby, M., …Kobayashi, K. (2013). Nonvolatile liquid anthracenes for facile full-colour luminescence tuning at single blue-light excitation. Nature communications, https://doi.org/10.1038/ncomms2969

• Acceptance Date: May 2, 2013
• Publication Date: Jun 5, 2013
• Journal: Nature Communications
• Print ISSN: 2041-1723
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/ncomms2969
• Keywords: chemical sciences; materials science; organic chemistry; physical chemistry
• Publisher URL: http://www.nature.com/ncomms/2013/130605/ncomms2969/full/ncomms2969.html