Polymeric Materials Showing Long Lifetime Phosphorescence

Polymer-based room-temperature-phosphorescent (RTP) materials are attractive alternatives to low-molecular-weight organic RTP compounds because they can form self-standing transparent films with high thermal stability. However, their RTP lifetimes in air are usually short (<≈0.4 s). We accidentally found that an inexpensive commercial polymer, polystyrene sulfonic acid (PSS) exhibits a long-lived phosphorescence of more than 1 second at room temperature and in the atmosphere when desiccated. Because of polymeric compounds, it has attractive properties such as film-forming ability. We focus on creation of soft/flexible RTP materials by hybridization of PSS with other materials and preparation of block polymers containing PSS segments.