The team led by Prof. Zhang Juncheng from OUC’s Faculty of Information Science and Engineering, published an article titled “Dynamic multicolor emissions of multimodal phosphors by Mn2+ trace doping in self-activated CaGa4O7” in Nature Communications. 

With the rapid development of information technology, there is an increasing demand for physical field sensing and information security. Intelligent luminescent materials can transform external environmental stimuli into optical information, showing great value in optical sensing, intelligent anti-counterfeiting, information encryption and other fields. The excitation mode of luminescent material and luminescent color are the key factors for identification-authentication applications. Traditional luminescent materials are limited to single-mode response and static monochromatic luminescence, with the problems of single sensing mode or low encryption level. The construction of multimodal luminescent materials with dynamic color-changing luminescent properties is urgently needed to achieve multi-excitation sensing and high-level encryption in the dimensions of time and space and meet the needs of higher-level applications. However, the mechanism of dynamic color-changing luminescence is still unclear, and the lack of design methods for multi-modal luminescent materials has seriously hindered the development and application of dynamic multi-modal luminescent materials.

To address these challenges, Prof. Zhang Juncheng’s team proposes the strategy of using intrinsic and non-intrinsic defects to synergistically induce multi-physical field luminescence. Through introducing a trace amount of Mn2+ activator into a self-activated gallate matrix, they obtain multi-modal luminescence with dynamically color-changing fluorescence in a single material for the first time and demonstrate the color, pattern and light intensity regulated by the force-heat-photophysical field dynamic changes and sensing applications in the temporal and spatial dimensions. This research provides important support for the development of dynamic multimodal luminescent materials and clarifies the trap-controlled dynamic luminescence mechanism. It is expected to promote the application of materials in dynamic luminescence color rendering, higher-order anti-counterfeiting encryption, and multi-stimulus sensing.