Phosphorescence from purely organic molecules has been considered to be a rare feature with little practical use. In the last decade however, material research has shown that room temperature phosphorescence (RTP) is found in a very large set of different organic materials and can be brought to respectable photoluminescence efficiencies. Still, one of the key quantities for RTP, namely the excited state lifetime, remains orders of magnitude longer compared to conventional fluorophores or organometallic phosphors. This long lifetime renders RTP unsuited for OLED-display technology.
In this presentation, I will discuss some recent developments towards two application concepts which function only because of the special features of RTP. First, I will introduce programmable luminescent tags that function as an electronics-free, thin-film, flexible and fully transparent information storage device. Second, RTP is used at the heart of a wavelength tracking sensor system. Here, a thin-film comprising an RTP emitter and an additional secondary emitter is effectively used as a spin-mixing layer that allows simple wavelength-discrimination.
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