How temperature and hydrostatic pressure impact organic room temperature phosphorescence from H-aggregation of planar triarylboranes and the application in bioimaging

Highly efficient persistent organic room temperature phosphorescence (RTP) has attracted increasing attention because of promising applications in fields of chemical sensors, optoelectronic devices, information security, and bioimaging, etc. Wherein, the crystal engineering of H-aggregation offers stabilization for long-lived triplet exciton for RTP, but the related research is rare because of the scarcity of ideal phosphorescent H-aggregate. Herein, we designed planar tricoordinate organoboron derivatives with molecular arrangement in ideal H-aggregation. The integration of Br atom can largely enhance RTP efficiency through increasing SOC effect, while the antiparallel molecular arrangement causes annihilation of triplet exciton. Thanks to good self-assembly property, their RTP can even be observed in PMMA matrix with doping ratio of merely 1 wt%. We further found that the cryogenic temperature contributes to stabilizing triplet exciton in H-aggregation, leading to red-shifted phosphorescence. By applying high hydrostatic pressure, the phosphorescence was largely enhanced and redshifted, demonstrating the crucial role of H-aggregation on RTP property. In phosphorescent tissue imaging of live mouse, nanoparticles of BrBA exhibited high contrast image via eliminating the interference of autofluorescence.