Red-Shifted and Enhanced Photoluminescence Emissions from Hydrogen-Bonded Multicomponent Nontraditional Luminogens

Nontraditional luminogens (NTLs) without large π-conjugated aromatic structures have attracted a great deal of attention in recent years. Developing NTLs with red-shifted and enhanced emissions remains a great challenge. In this work, we developed a NTL composed of three components, i.e., polymaleic acid (PMA), arginine (Arg), and polyacrylamide (PAM), and investigated its photoluminescent behavior and mechanism. Compared with the single components and binary components, the PMA/Arg/PAM solid exhibited two red-shifted emission peaks at 510 and 562 nm and higher quantum yields. Structural characterizations demonstrated that hydrogen bonds formed between the nonconventional chromophores in PMA and Arg lead to more extended through-space conjugation and rigidified conformations, which is the fundamental reason for the red-shifted emission and higher quantum yield of the PMA/Arg/PAM solid. In addition, theoretical calculations proved that excited-state proton transfer occurs between the carboxyl groups of PMA and amino groups of Arg via photoexcitation, resulting in dual emissions in the PMA/Arg/PAM solid. This work provides a deeper understanding of the photoluminescence mechanism of NTLs based on multiple hydrogen bonds and is helpful in guiding the design of NTLs with red-shifted and enhanced emissions.