Green and Near-Infrared Dual-Mode Afterglow of Carbon Dots and Their Applications for Confidential Information Readout

Near-infrared(NIR),particularly NIR-containing dual-/multimode afterglow,is very attractive in many fields of application,but it is still a great challenge to achieve such property of materials. Herein,we report a facile method to prepare green and NIR dual-mode afterglow of carbon dots(CDs) through in situ embedding o-CDs(being prepared from o-phenylenediamine) into cyanuric acid(CA) matrix(named o-CDs@CA). Further studies reveal that the green and NIR afterglows of o-CDs@CA originate from thermal activated delayed fluorescence(TADF) and room temperature phosphorescence(RTP) of o-CDs,respectively. In addition,the formation of covalent bonds between o-CDs and CA,and the presence of multiple fixation and rigid e ects to the triplet states of o-CDs are confirmed to be critical for activating the observed dual-mode afterglow. Due to the shorter lifetime and insensitiveness to human vision of the NIR RTP of o-CDs@CA,it is completely covered by the green TADF during directly observing. The NIR RTP signal,however,can be readily captured if an optical filter(cut-o wavelength of 600 nm) being used. By utilizing these unique features,the applications of o-CDs@CA in anti-counterfeiting and information encryption have been demonstrated with great confidentiality. Finally,the as-developed method was confirmed to be applicable to many other kinds of CDs for achieving or enhancing their afterglow performances.