Organic materials with temperature-responsive
luminescence (TRL) generally exhibit step-change of luminescent intensity
during temperature variation. The persistent room-temperature phosphorescence
(pRTP) materials have significant advantages in long-lived triplet excitons,
which are promising new type of TRL materials. Here, a D-A type benzophenone
derivative, namely BrBDBF, has been
designed and synthesized. Interestingly, two crystals (BrBDBF-Y and BrBDBF-W)
with different pRTP properties are found for BrBDBF. In addition, the bright crystal BrBDBF-Y presented a temperature-induced tunable emission
color-switching from bluish-green to yellow. While the crystal BrBDBF-W with very weak emission
exhibited high contrast “turn-on” luminescencewhich increased about 40 times as the temperature dropping. These
results demonstrate that BrBDBF is a
new type of TRL material and provides opportunities for the advanced
application of organic pRTP materials.