Abstract
Visible-light persistent phosphors are being widely used as self-sustained night-vision materials because of their sufficiently strong and long afterglow (>10 h) and their ability to be excited by sunlight as well as room light. In contrast, persistent phosphors for near-infrared (NIR) wavelengths are lacking. Here we report a series of Cr3+-doped zinc gallogermanate NIR persistent phosphors that exhibit strong emission at 650–1,000 nm, extending beyond the typical 690–750 nm, and with a super-long afterglow of more than 360 h. These new NIR persistent phosphors are all-weather materials that can be rapidly, effectively and repeatedly charged by natural sunlight in almost all kinds of outdoor environment. Seconds to minutes of sunlight activation can result in more than two weeks of persistent NIR light emission. This new series of NIR persistent materials have potential applications in night-vision surveillance, solar energy utilization and in vivo bio-imaging.
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Acknowledgements
We acknowledge financial support from the US Office of Naval Research (N00014-07-1-0060), the National Science Foundation (CAREER DMR-0955908), the American Chemical Society Petroleum Research Fund (PRF 50265-DN10) and the University of Georgia Research Foundation. We thank R. S. Meltzer for discussions.
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Z.P. conceived and designed the experiments, and was responsible for the project planning. Y-Y.L. and F.L. carried out material synthesis and spectral measurements. F.L. investigated the persistent luminescence mechanism. Z.P. and F.L. carried out the NIR imaging. Z.P. and F.L. co-wrote the paper. All of the authors discussed the results.
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Pan, Z., Lu, YY. & Liu, F. Sunlight-activated long-persistent luminescence in the near-infrared from Cr3+-doped zinc gallogermanates. Nature Mater 11, 58–63 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1038/nmat3173
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/nmat3173
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