Tunable Full-color Room Temperature Phosphorescence of Two Single-Component Zinc(II) Complexes

Abstract

Tunable full-color room temperature phosphorescence (RTP) is charming due to its potentials in multiple anti-counterfeitings, all-color displays, and multichannel biomarkers. However, it is a huge challenge to acquire excitation-dependent continuously adjustable full-color RTP from a single-component compound. Herein, we report two Zn(II)−based organic complexes, which are the first examples that present blue, cyan, green, yellow, orange, and red continuously tunable phosphorescence with decent quantum efficiency in response to variation of excitation energy at ambient conditions. The unique photoluminescence property is induced by multiple triplet decay pathways, i.e. 3ligand-centered* and 3charge transfer*. The population and stabilization of the triplet excitons benefit from heavy atom effect of Br ions and restriction of molecular motion due to crystallization. This work contributes an insight for the construction of full-color RTP materials and endows Zn(II)−based organic complexes with fresh features for extensive applications.