Abstract
Photocured room-temperature phosphorescence (RTP) materials have considerable potential applications but are rarely reported. Here, we reported photocured RTP materials from naphthalimide, which simultaneously acts as RTP chromophore and photo-initiator. Specifically, naphthalimide generates radicals to polymerize acrylic acid and acrylamide upon UV irradiation. The resulting naphthalimide is tightly restricted in in-situ formed crosslinked matrix to achieve robust RTP (τp = 389.58 ms, φp = 17.83%, water and organic solvents resistance). Significantly, carboxyl can bind onto lone-pair electrons of tertiary amine in naphthalimide through proton transfer hydrogen-bonds (PTHBs), inhibiting nonradiative decay of S1 induced by photoinduced electron transfer (PET); increasing spin-orbit coupling (SOC) to promote intersystem crossing (ISC); cooperating with intermolecular hydrogen-bonds afford rigid microenvironment to stabilize triplet excitons. Moreover, afterglow colors are continuously tuned after loading different mass RhB via energy transfer. The as prepared materials are used as RTP inks for fabricating 3D printing and photopatterning for anti-counterfeiting and information encryption applications.
Similar content being viewed by others
Data availability
All relevant data are included in this article and its Supplementary Information files. All data underlying this study are available from the corresponding author Bing Fang upon request. Source data are provided with this paper.
References
Li, W. et al. A dish-like molecular architecture for dynamic ultralong room-temperature phosphorescence through reversible guest accommodation. Nat. Commun. 13, 7423 (2022).
Guo, D. et al. Visible-light-excited robust room-temperature phosphorescence of dimeric single-component luminophores in the amorphous state. Nat. Commun. 15, 398 (2024).
Huang, Z. et al. Photoprogrammable circularly polarized phosphorescence switching of chiral helical polyacetylene thin films. Nat. Commun. 13, 7841 (2022).
Li, D. et al. Completely aqueous processable stimulus responsive organic room temperature phosphorescence materials with tunable afterglow color. Nat. Commun. 13, 347 (2022).
Liu, S., Fang, X., Lu, B. & Yan, D. Wide range zero-thermal-quenching ultralong phosphorescence from zero-dimensional metal halide hybrids. Nat. Commun. 11, 4649 (2020).
Sun, H. & Zhu, L. Achieving purely organic room temperature phosphorescence in aqueous solution. Aggregate 4, e253 (2023).
Tian, R. et al. Design of mechanical-robust phosphorescence materials through covalent click reaction. Nat. Commun. 14, 4720 (2023).
An, Z. et al. Stabilizing triplet excited states for ultralong organic phosphorescence. Nat. Mater. 14, 685–690 (2015).
Chen, T. & Yan, D. Full-color, time-valve controllable and Janus-type long persistent luminescence from all-inorganic halide perovskites. Nat. Commun. 15, 5281 (2024).
Li, W. et al. A universal strategy for activating the multicolor room-temperature afterglow of carbon dots in a boric acid matrix. Angew. Chem. Int. Ed. 58, 7278–7283 (2019).
Ju, H. et al. Polymerization-induced crystallization of dopant molecules: an efficient strategy for room-temperature phosphorescence of hydrogels. J. Am. Chem. Soc. 145, 3763–3773 (2023).
Li, X. et al. Bright and ultralong organic phosphorescence via sulfonic acid functionalization for high-contrast real-time light-writing display. J. Am. Chem. Soc. 147, 14198–14210 (2025).
Shi, M. et al. Hierarchical luminescence center coupling enables time-dependent phosphorescence color from self-protective carbonized polymer dots. Nat. Commun. 16, 7473 (2025).
Wang, Y. et al. Full-color tunable and stimuli-responsive ultralong room- temperature phosphorescence from sesbania galactomannan phosphorescence from sesbania galactomannan. Chem. Eng. J. 522, 167780 (2025).
Fang, B., Lai, L., Fan, M. & Yin, M. Designing organic room temperature phosphorescence with ultralong lifetime by substituent modification. J. Mater. Chem. C 9, 11172–11179 (2021).
Zhao, W., He, Z. & Tang, B. Z. Room-temperature phosphorescence from organic aggregates. Nat. Rev. Mater. 5, 869–885 (2020).
Wang, G. et al. Dual-mechanism design strategy for high-efficiency and long-lived organic afterglow materials. J. Am. Chem. Soc. 146, 24871–24883 (2024).
Fateminia, S. et al. Organic nanocrystals with bright red persistent room-temperature phosphorescence for biological applications. Angew. Chem. Int. Ed. 25, 12160–12164 (2017).
Xue, P. et al. Bright persistent luminescence from pure organic molecules through a moderate intermolecular heavy atom effect. Chem. Sci. 8, 6060–6065 (2017).
Cai, S. et al. Enhancing ultralong organic phosphorescence by effective π-type halogen bonding. Adv. Funct. Mater. 28, 1705045 (2018).
Peng, H. et al. On-demand modulating afterglow color of water-soluble polymers through phosphorescence FRET for multicolor security printing. Sci. Adv. 8, eabk2925 (2022).
Miao, Y. et al. Stable and ultralong room-temperature phosphorescent copolymers with excellent adhesion, resistance, and toughness. Sci. Adv. 10, adk3354 (2024).
Yang, H. et al. Host-dependent tunable phosphorescence based on aromatic heterocyclic derivatives: highly efficient and photo-activated ultralong organic phosphorescence. Adv. Mater. 37, e03550 (2025).
Zhou, L. et al. Achieving efficient dark blue room-temperature phosphorescence with ultra-wide range tunable-lifetime. Angew. Chem. Int. Ed. 63, e202403773 (2024).
Gao, Y. et al. Regulating isolated-molecular and aggregated-state phosphorescence for multicolor afterglow by photoactivation. Adv. Mater. 35, 2306501 (2023).
Lu, J. et al. Time-dependent color-tunable room temperature phosphorescence from unusual conformational transitions in phenothiazine polymers under UV irradiation. Sci. China. Chem. 68, 1091–1098 (2024).
Wang, X. et al. Activating room-temperature phosphorescence of 1,8-naphthalimide by doping into aromatic dicarboxylic acids. Chem. Commun. 58, 3641–3644 (2022).
Zhao, R. et al. Macromolecular engineered multifunctional room-temperature phosphorescent polymers through reversible deactivation radical polymerization. J. Am. Chem. Soc. 145, 26532–26539 (2023).
Wang, K. et al. NPA6: A Molecule for non-covalently linked radical enhanced ISC and high-performance photopolymerization with afterglow. Angew. Chem. Int. Ed. 64, e202509520 (2025).
Sun, Y. et al. Purely organic blue room-temperature phosphorescence activated by acrylamide in situ photopolymerization. Adv. Opt. Mater. 10, 2201330 (2022).
Gan, N. et al. Stretchable phosphorescent polymers by multiphase engineering. Nat. Commun. 15, 4113 (2024).
Chen, H. et al. Water-resistant organic room-temperature phosphorescence from block copolymers. Angew. Chem. Int. Ed. 64, e202500610 (2025).
Gu, F. & Ma, X. Stimuli-responsive polymers with room-temperature phosphorescence. Chem. Eur. J. 28, e202104131 (2022).
Ding, B., Ma, X. & Tian, H. Recent advances of pure organic room temperature phosphorescence based on functional polymers. Acc. Mater. Res. 4, 827–838 (2023).
Ji, M. & Ma, X. Recent progress of organic room-temperature phosphorescent materials towards application. Ind. Chem. Mater. 1, 582–594 (2023).
Deng, S., Wu, J., Dickey, M. D., Zhao, Q. & Xie, T. Rapid open-air digital light 3D printing of thermoplastic polymer. Adv. Mater. 31, 1903970 (2019).
Yu, J., Gao, Y., Jiang, S. & Sun, F. Naphthalimide aryl sulfide derivative norrish type I photoinitiators with excellent stability to sunlight under near-UV LED. Macromolecules 52, 1707–1717 (2019).
Guo, H. et al. Photocured room temperature phosphorescent materials from lignosulfonate. Nat. Commun. 15, 1590 (2024).
Wang, M. et al. Solvent-free processing of lignin into robust room temperature phosphorescent materials. Nat. Commun. 16, 2455 (2025).
Gu, F. et al. Visualization of photocuring and 4D printing with real-time phosphorescence. Nat. Commun. 16, 4173 (2025).
Zhang, J. et al. Structure design of naphthalimide derivatives: Toward versatile photoinitiators for near-UV/visible LEDs, 3D printing, and water-soluble photoinitiating systems. Macromolecules 48, 2054–2063 (2015).
Fang, B. et al. Spacer group modified naphthalimide with acidichromism and mechanochromism for anti-counterfeiting application. Chem. Eur. J. 31, e01233 (2025).
Li, S. & Yan, D. Tuning light-driven motion and bending in macroscale-flexible molecular crystals based on a cocrystal approach. ACS Appl. Mater. Interfaces 10, 22703–22710 (2018).
Wu, Z. et al. Crystallization-induced emission enhancement of a deep-blue luminescence material with tunable mechano- and thermochromism. Small 14, 1802504 (2018).
Tehfe, M. et al. New push-pull dyes derived from michler’s ketone for polymerization reactions upon visible lights. Macromolecules 46, 3761–3770 (2013).
Gong, Y. et al. Achieving persistent room temperature phosphorescence and remarkable mechanochromism from pure organic luminogens. Adv. Mater. 27, 6195–6201 (2015).
Li, D., Yang, J., Fang, M., Tang, B. Z. & Li, Z. Stimulus-responsive room temperature phosphorescence materials with full-color tunability from pure organic amorphous polymers. Sci. Adv. 8, eabl8392 (2022).
Liu, Q. et al. Circularly polarized room temperature phosphorescence through twisting-induced helical structures from polyvinyl alcohol-based fibers containing hydrogen-bonded dyes. Angew. Chem. Int. Ed. 63, e202403391 (2024).
Liang, H. et al. Stimuli-responsive recyclable polymers with room-temperature ultralong phosphorescence for anti-counterfeiting. Adv. Func. Mater. 36, e13575 (2026).
Xiong, S. et al. Achieving tunable organic afterglow and UV-irradiation-responsive ultralong room-temperature phosphorescence from pyridine-substituted triphenylamine derivatives. Adv. Mater. 35, 2301874 (2023).
Lu, T. & Chen, F. Quantitative analysis of molecular surface based on improved Marching Tetrahedra algorithm. J. Mol. Graph. Model. 38, 314–323 (2012).
Lu, T. & Chen, Q. Independent gradient model based on Hirshfeld partition: A new method for visual study of interactions in chemical systems. J. Comput. Chem. 43, 539–555 (2022).
Ma, F. et al. Lone pairs-mediated multiple through-space interactions for efficient room-temperature phosphorescence. J. Am. Chem. Soc. 147, 10803–10814 (2025).
Zhao, W. et al. Boosting the efficiency of organic persistent room-temperature phosphorescence by intramolecular triplet-triplet energy transfer. Nat. Commun. 10, 1595 (2019).
Kuila, S. & George, S. J. Phosphorescence energy transfer: ambient afterglow fluorescence from water-processable and purely organic dyes via delayed sensitization. Angew. Chem. Int. Ed. 59, 9393–9397 (2020).
Acknowledgements
M.Y. wishes to thank the National Natural Science Foundation of China (No. 52130309 and W2412081), B.F. wishes to thank the Zhiyuan Science Foundation of Beijing Institute of Petrochemical Technology (No. 2024106), and Y.D. wishes to thank the Undergraduate Research Training Program of Beijing Institute of Petrochemical Technology (No. 2025J00211). This work was supported by the High Performance Computing Platform of BUCT.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Contributions
Conceptualization: B.F., M.Y., and Y.D.; Methodology: A.W. and H.W.; Investigation: A.W., H.W., K.L, X.H., M.C., W.B.; Visualization: A. W., J.W., Y.Q., Y.Z., and J.Y.; Supervision: B.F.; Writing-original draft: B. F.; Writing–review and editing: All authors.
Corresponding authors
Ethics declarations
Competing interests
The authors declare no competing interests.
Peer review
Peer review information
Nature Communications thanks Zhenhua Wang and the other, anonymous, reviewers for their contribution to the peer review of this work. A peer review file is available.
Additional information
Publisher’s note Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.
Supplementary information
Source data
Rights and permissions
Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.
About this article
Cite this article
Wang, A., Wei, H., Lin, K. et al. Proton transfer regulated photocured robust room-temperature phosphorescence from naphthalimide. Nat Commun (2026). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-026-70999-8
Received:
Accepted:
Published:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-026-70999-8
