Confined-domain crosslink-enhanced emission effect in carbonized polymer dots

Songyuan Tao; Changjiang Zhou; Chunyuan Kang; Shoujun Zhu; Tanglue Feng; Shi-Tong Zhang; Zeyang Ding; Chengyu Zheng; Chunlei Xia; Bai Yang

doi:10.1038/s41377-022-00745-4

Confined-domain crosslink-enhanced emission effect in carbonized polymer dots

Light Sci Appl. 2022 Mar 10;11(1):56. doi: 10.1038/s41377-022-00745-4.

Authors

Songyuan Tao¹, Changjiang Zhou², Chunyuan Kang¹, Shoujun Zhu^{1

3}, Tanglue Feng¹, Shi-Tong Zhang¹, Zeyang Ding¹, Chengyu Zheng¹, Chunlei Xia¹, Bai Yang⁴

Affiliations

¹ State Key Laboratory of Supramolecular Structure and Materials, College of Chemistry, Jilin University, Changchun, 130012, China.
² College of Chemical Engineering, Zhejiang University of Technology, Hangzhou, 310014, China.
³ Key Laboratory of Organ Regeneration and Transplantation of the Ministry of Education, the First Hospital of Jilin University, Changchun, 130061, China.
⁴ State Key Laboratory of Supramolecular Structure and Materials, College of Chemistry, Jilin University, Changchun, 130012, China. byangchem@jlu.edu.cn.

Abstract

Revealing the photoluminescence (PL) origin and mechanism is a most vital but challenging topic of carbon dots. Herein, confined-domain crosslink-enhanced emission (CEE) effect was first studied by a well-designed model system of carbonized polymer dots (CPDs), serving as an important supplement to CEE in the aspect of spatial interactions. The "addition-condensation polymerization" strategy was adopted to construct CPDs with substituents exerting different degrees of steric hindrance. The effect of confined-domain CEE on the structure and luminescence properties of CPDs have been systematically investigated by combining characterizations and theoretical calculations. Such tunable spatial interactions dominated the coupling strength of the luminophores in one particle, and eventually resulted in the modulated PL properties of CPDs. These findings provide insights into the structural advantages and the PL mechanism of CPDs, which are of general significance to the further development of CPDs with tailored properties.