Achieving Stimuli-Responsive Amorphous Organic Afterglow in Single-Component Copolymer through Self-Doping

The development of stimuli-responsive materials with afterglow emission is highly desirable but remains a formidable challenge in a single-component material system. Herein, we propose a strategy to achieve photoactivated afterglow emission in a variety of amorphous copolymers through self-doping, endowed by the synergetic effect of self-host-induced guest sensitization and thermal-processed polymer rigidification for boosting the generation and stabilization of triplet excitons. Upon continuous ultraviolet illumination for regulating the oxygen concentration, a photoactivated afterglow showing increased lifetimes from 0.34 to 867.4 ms is realized. These afterglow emissions can be naturally or quickly deactivated to the pristine state under ambient conditions or heating treatment. Interestingly, programmable and reusable afterglow patterns, conceptual pulse-width indicators, and "excitation-time lock" Morse code are successfully established using stimuli-responsive afterglow polymers as recorded media. These findings offer an avenue to construct a single-component polymeric system with photoactivated organic afterglow features and demonstrate the superiority of stimuli-responsive materials for remarkable applications.