Water-soluble polymers with aggregation-induced emission and ultra-long room temperature phosphorescence

Polymer-based pure organic room-temperature phosphorescent materials have attracted much attention from researchers due to their diverse molecular design, favorable processability, good flexibility, and potential applications in flexible electronics, anti-counterfeiting, and information encryption. However, most pure organic room-temperature phosphorescence is achieved by embedding very small amounts of phosphorescent powders into rigid polymer substrates through covalent or non-covalent bonds. While this approach can greatly improve the phosphorescence properties, it will also limit their application in other areas such as ion detection and biosensing, and most pure organic room temperature phosphorescent materials require harsh conditions and toxic organic solvents. Herein, polymers with fluorescence and phosphorescence dual emission were prepared by simple radical solution copolymerization of biobased raw materials sodium p-styrene sulfonate and amino acid derivatives in aqueous solution, which exhibit sky blue fluorescence emission and durable green RTP emission (a lifetime up to 606.5 ms) under air conditions. They can be used for ion detection, temperature sensing, anti-counterfeiting, and information encryption.