- Luminophore
A luminophore is an atom or atomic grouping in a
chemical compound that manifestsluminescence . There exist organic and inorganic luminophores. It should be stressed that the correct, textbook terminology is "luminophore", not "lumophore", although the latter term has been frequently but erroneously used in the chemical literature.Luminophores can be divided into two subcategories:
fluorophore s andphosphor s. The difference between luminophores belonging to these two subcategories is derived from the nature of theexcited state responsible for the emission ofphoton s. Some luminophores, however, cannot be classified as being exclusivelyfluorophore s orphosphors and exist in the gray area in between. Such cases includetransition metal complexes (such asruthenium tris-2,2'-bipyridine ) whose luminescence comes from an excited (nominally triplet) metal-to-ligand charge transfer (MLCT) state, but which is not a true triplet-state in the strict sense of the definition.Most luminophores consist of conjugated pi systems or
transition metal complexes. There exist purely inorganic luminophores, such as zinc sulfide doped with rare earth metal ions, rare earth metal oxysulfides doped with other rare earth metal ions, yttrium oxide doped with rare earth metal ions, zinc orthosilicate doped with manganese ions, etc. Luminophores can be observed in action in fluorescent lights, TV screens, computer monitor screens,organic light-emitting diode s andbioluminescence .
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