【Frontiers in HaiChuan Chemical Technology】Progress achieved in the research on ultra-long-lived phosphorescent ion gels at East China University of Science and Technology

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This post was last edited by HaiChuan LaoYu on 2025-10-28 at 11:33. Progress has been made in the research on ultra-long-lasting phosphorescent ion gels at East China University of Science and Technology. Recently, the research team led by Academician Tian He and Professor Ma Xiang from the Feilinga Nobel Prize Scientist Joint Research Center at the School of Chemistry and Molecular Engineering of East China University of Science and Technology achieved an important breakthrough in the field of flexible organic room-temperature phosphorescent materials. The relevant findings were published in the internationally renowned chemistry journal Angewandte Chemie International Edition (Angew. Chem. Int. Ed. 2025, e202518340). Image caption: a) Schematic diagram of the photopolymerization preparation process and properties of the ultra-long-room-temperature phosphorescent ion gel ； b) Radar chart comparing the properties of the ultra-long-lived room-temperature phosphorescent ionogel material reported in this article with those of materials reported in the same field during the same period ； c) Schematic diagram of ultra-long-room-temperature phosphorescent ionogel materials for smart monitoring applications. In recent years, organic room-temperature phosphorescent materials have shown great potential for applications in information encryption, data storage, biomedical imaging, and other fields, which has sparked strong interest among researchers. Among them, flexible organic room-temperature phosphorescent materials show tremendous potential for development in fields such as electronic sensing and high-resolution flexible displays. However, current research on flexible organic room-temperature phosphorescent materials focuses mainly on hydrogen-bond-rich organic polymer materials such as polyvinyl alcohol and polyacrylamide, and such insulating materials are still far from meeting the requirements for integration in actual circuits. Recently, this team has successfully developed a series of flexible ionic gel materials with ultra-long room-temperature phosphorescent emission, based on the multi-level interactions between ionic liquids and hydrogen-bond-rich polymer monomers. In a solvent-rich environment (with an ionic liquid content of >50%), the aforementioned materials exhibit excellent mechanical and optical properties: the maximum strain elongation rate is close to 1000%, and the maximum toughness is approximately 77.11 MJ/m3. At room temperature, they can display a very long afterglow emission duration of around 60 seconds; their emission range spans from deep blue to the near-infrared region, with CIE coordinates including (0.15, 0.18), (0.38, 0.58), and (0.66, 0.33). Thanks to the excellent electrical properties, thermal stability, and low volatility of ionic liquids, these gel materials have been further integrated with smart materials in subsequent research, and have been successfully applied in various practical scenarios such as industrial polymerization monitoring, self-reporting materials for stress damage detection, smart conductive materials, and smart thermally driven actuators. This research pioneers the use of a novel ionogel system to develop a series of conductive flexible materials that exhibit high strain and toughness as well as long-lasting phosphorescent emission; it also integrates these materials effectively with the field of smart materials, thereby providing groundbreaking guidance on the application prospects of flexible organic room-temperature phosphorescent materials.