Interdiscipline between optoelectronic materials and mechanical sensors: Recent advances of organic triboluminescent compounds and their applications in sensing

Abstract

Triboluminescence, also as known as mechanoluminescence, is an attractive optical behavior that means the light emitted from specific organic and inorganic materials when they are subjected to external forces, such as crushing, deformation, cleaving, vibration. Inorganic triboluminescent materials show great potential for applications in sensing, such as stress sensing, damage detection. However, the triboluminescent mechanism of organic materials should be pushed further as well as their application. In this review, we summarized the history of development and possible mechanism of organic triboluminescent materials, and discussed various applications in sensing field. At the same time, inspired by the existing research progress in inorganic triboluminescent materials, we proposed the flourishing development prospects of organic triboluminescent materials in stress sensors, movement monitoring, imaging stress distribution, visualization of crack propagation, structural diagnosis, and other fields.

Keywords

triboluminescence / crystal engineering / stress imaging / piezoelectric properties

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