Anti-Stokes Stress Sensing: Mechanochemical Activation of Triplet-Triplet Annihilation Photon Upconversion

The development of methods to detect damage in macromolecular materials is of paramount importance to understand their mechanical failure and the structure-property relationships of polymers. Mechanofluorophores are useful and sensitive molecular motifs for this purpose. However, to date, tailoring of their optical properties remains challenging and correlating emission intensity to force induced material damage and the respective events on the molecular level is complicated by intrinsic limitations of fluorescence and its detection techniques. Now, this is tackled by developing the first stress-sensing motif that relies on photon upconversion. By combining the Diels-Alder adduct of a pi-extended anthracene with the porphyrin-based triplet sensitizer PtOEP in polymers, triplet-triplet annihilation photon upconversion of green to blue light is mechanochemically activated in solution as well as in the solid state.