Phosphorescent materials are widely used in biosensing, light-emitting devices, information encryption, and anticounterfeiting. Among materials, room-temperature phosphorescence (RTP) based on carbon dots (CDs) has made great progress in recent years, but cannot maintain phosphorescence emission in water environments. Therefore, the design and synthesis of CDs-based RTP materials with tunable and stable emissions in water are important for advanced applications. Herein, novel RTP CDs hybrid materials (ATPA-CDs@Al2O3) were obtained by a one-step method by calcining mixed 2-aminoterephthalic acid and Al(OH)3. The dense structure of Al2O3 during the calcination process resulted in the formation of ATPA-CDs@Al2O3 with an RTP emission. ATPA-CDs@Al2O3 exhibited a color change from blue to green under excitation wavelengths from 254 to 394 nm (excitation-dependent RTP emission). More importantly, ATPA-CDs@Al2O3 displayed a long phosphorescence lifetime (0.84 s), as well as stable phosphorescence in HCl, NaOH, and organic solvents, thereby demonstrating potential for use in information encryption, anticounterfeiting, and fingerprint recognition.
Dang et al. (Wed,) studied this question.