Day-Long Persistent Luminescence in Intrinsically Integrated Donor-Acceptor Carbon Dots Enabled by Defect-Mediated Charge Trapping.

Long-persistent luminescence (LPL) materials capable of storing and releasing optical energy over extended timescales are highly desirable for next-generation photonic technologies, yet structurally stable integrated donor-acceptor (D-A) systems capable of day-scale, color-tunable LPL remain elusive. Here, we report intrinsically integrated D-A carbon dots exhibiting continuously tunable LPL from deep blue to yellow-green, featuring day-scale persistence of up to 36 h and a naked-eye visible afterglow exceeding 4 h. Structurally, nitrogen-doped carbon-core donor domains are covalently coupled with arylboronic acid derived acceptor moieties through B─N linkages, forming an integrated D-A framework enriched with intrinsic defect-related trap states. Upon photoexcitation, intraparticle charge transfer (CT) generates long-lived charge-separated states, some of which are stabilized by intrinsic traps. Subsequent thermally activated detrapping releases the stored carriers and drives charge recombination, ultimately giving rise to day-scale LPL. Furthermore, modulation of the acceptor electronic structure regulates the energy of the emissive CT state, enabling rationally tunable multicolor LPL. Benefiting from its day-scale persistence and continuously tunable multicolor emission, this system enables potential applications in high-resolution displays, dynamic anti-counterfeiting, and intelligent information encryption. More importantly, this work establishes an intrinsically integrated D-A-trap design principle for ultralong LPL and a rational acceptor-engineering strategy for multicolor persistent luminescence.