Abstract
Ultralong organic phosphorescence (UOP) and especially high-temperature phosphorescence (HTP) are difficult to be achieved in pure organic nontraditional luminogens (NTLs). Herein, we develop a strategy to prepare UOP materials by solvent exchange of an NTLs-based hydrogel with a deep eutectic solvent (DES), followed by wet annealing. The obtained polyacrylamide-DES complexes exhibit afterglows up to 9.5 s, room-temperature phosphorescence (RTP) lifetimes up to 622.5 ms, and high phosphorescence quantum yields of 17.6%. Excitingly, they also exhibit HTP with a lifetime of 366.2 ms even at 120°C and exhibit highly stable UOP in organic solvents. DESs form strong hydrogen bonding with the polymer matrix, the heavy atom effect of bromine in the DESs promotes the occurrence of RTP, and the rigidified and stable structures enable the HTP of the complexes. This work provides a universal strategy for preparing non-aromatic UOP materials for wide applications.
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Data availability
The data generated in this study are provided in the main text, Supplementary Information and Source Data file. Atomic coordinates of the optimized computational models of DES (TD), PAM-PAM and PAM-TD are available in Supplementary Data. Data is available from the corresponding author on request. Source data are provided with this paper.
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Acknowledgements
We are grateful for financial support from the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant No. 22472010, H.W.) and the Program for Changjiang Scholars and Innovative Research Team (PCSIRT) at the University.
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X.Z. conceived the study, performed the experiments, conducted data analysis and wrote the manuscript. Y.B. carried out theoretical calculations. G.Q. participated in the experiments. Y.S. participated in the conception of the study. W.X. analyzed the data. J.X. and J.D. participated in the revision of the manuscript. H.D. provided related drawing supports. Y.Z corrected the manuscript. H.W. conceived, supervised the study and revised the manuscript. All authors have agreed with the manuscript for publication.
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Nature Communications thanks Haoke Zhang, who co-reviewed with Xiong Liu; and the other, anonymous, reviewers for their contribution to the peer review of this work. A peer review file is available.
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Zhong, X., Bai, Y., Qiao, G. et al. Nonaromatic polymer-deep eutectic solvent complexes with ultralong room-temperature and high-temperature phosphorescence. Nat Commun (2026). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-026-71041-7
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-026-71041-7
