Anti-Stokes Luminescence in Multi-Resonance-Type Thermally-Activated Delayed Fluorescence Molecules

Photon-upconversion in organic molecular systems is one of the promising technologies for future energy harvesting systems because these systems can generate excitons that possess higher energy than excitation energy. The photon-upconversion caused by absorbing ambient heat as additional energy is particularly interesting because it could ideally provide a light-driving cooling system. However, only a few organic molecular systems have been reported. Here, we report the anti-Stokes photoluminescence (ASPL) derived from hot-band absorption in a series of multi-resonance-type thermally-activated delayed fluorescence (MR-TADF) molecules. The MR-TADF molecules exhibited an anti-Stokes shift of approximately 0.1 eV with a high PL quantum yield in the solution state. The anti-Stokes shift corresponded well to the 1–0 vibration transition from the ground state to the excited singlet state, and we further evaluated a correlation between the activation energy for the ASPL intensity and the TADF process. Our demonstration underlines that MR-TADF molecules have become a novel class of ASPL materials for various future applications, such as light-driving cooling systems.