Lanthanide-doped nanocrystals enable organic room-temperature phosphorescence in solution through direct triplet excitation
Akshay Rao
Nature Chemistry, Published online: 25 May 2026; doi:10.1038/s41557-026-02159-w Organic triplet excitons are ‘dark states’, rendering direct photoexcitation from the ground state and efficient phosphorescence difficult. Now it has been shown that attaching chromophores to lanthanide-doped nanocrystals enables spin-exchange-mediated direct triplet excitation and nanosecond-timescale, oxygen-insensitive phosphorescence in solution and under ambient conditions.