Lanthanide supramolecular cascade energy transfer achieves panchromatic luminescence for multilevel anti-counterfeiting

Tunable lanthanide supramolecular cascade panchromatic luminescence assembly was constructed by co-assembly of naphthylimidazolium picolinic acid (G1)@Tb3+ complex, laponite (LP), diarylethene derivative, and Nile blue/Nile red with Rh800, which not only displayed the cascade energy transfer of light-harvesting from the optically adjustable rare-earth Tb3+ to Nile blue (energy transfer efficiency: 58%) or Nile red (75%), then to Rh800 (>20%), leading to an ultra-large Stokes shift over 600 nm, but also showed the acid-base adjustable assembly and disassembly. Especially, the electrostatic interactions between LP and the positively charged G1 effectively promote the green luminescence of Tb and the blue luminescence of G1 in supramolecular assembly. Significantly, this lanthanide supramolecular assembly leverages the multi-component cascade energy transfer to create a powerful information security platform. By precisely tuning the ratio of donor G1@Tb and acceptors Nile blue/Rh800, this assembly can generate tunable multi-color spectral outputs. This unique feature enables it to serve as multi-functional writing inks, facilitating switchable data logic encryption for multi-color information anti-counterfeiting, encoding information in ASCII format by embedding complex data within the multi-colored patterns and accurately read out via a simple scanning, and providing a convenient and efficient method for information storage and retrieval while ensuring high-level security.