As shown in the structures of
Fig. 1, there are no other heteroatoms and
π electrons in PMO and PBD except oxygen atoms and n and
σ electrons. Nonetheless, both PMO and PBD powders exhibited cyan-blue fluorescence and long-lived green RTP with a duration of 2.0 s, which belongs to the typical CL chromophores. To reveal the CL mechanism, PVA showing very weak fluorescence was chosen as a control owing to the similarity in molecule structure. The photoluminescence/phosphorescence quantum yield (QY/QY
p) of PMO and PBD are 12.15%/5.32% and 12.11%/5.17%, (Figs. S9 and S10 in Supporting information) respectively, which are relatively respectable values in NCLPs with RTP, especially for some NCLP systems with only oxygen atoms [
10,
13,
41,
42]. Considering that PMO and PBD have similar optical properties, here the PMO is taken as an example for detailed description. The pure white PMO powder shows distinct excitation-dependent photoluminescence (PL) properties (
Fig. 2a), similar to many of CL chromophores reported before [
22,
23,
43]. The spectra covered an emission band from 350 to 600 nm, with an emission peak of 438 nm excited by 360 nm (
Fig. 2a). The fluorescence lifetime measured at the emission peak of 438 nm was 3.95 ns (
Fig. 2b). Theoretically, there's no fluorescence in PMO because there is no definite conjugation unit in the molecular structure of PMO based on the theory of through-bond conjugation [
44]. Although the presence of oxygen atoms results in
n-σ* electronic transitions, the energy gap of the (n,
σ*) transition is too high to emit visible light. For example, the energy gap of (n,
σ*) transitions of methanol is around 6.7 eV [
45], corresponding to light with a wavelength of 183 nm. Also, the transitions are related to the promotion of an electron from a nonbonding n orbital to
σ* antibonding orbital, which are forbidden transitions and weak intensity. Therefore, the fluorescence of PMO does not originate from the (n,
σ*) transition of oxygen atom. So, what is the origin of such unusual PL? Tang and Yuan
et al. [
22-
24,
46] proposed the CTE mechanism and through-space interaction (TSI) from isolated aromatic rings and heteroatoms with lone-pair electrons can rationally reveal the PL origin of NCLPs. In this case, the only possibility is that the fluorescence originates from the through-space n-n interaction of oxygen. Owing to the overlap of n electrons of oxygen atoms in PMO, new orbitals with lower HOMO-LUMO gaps from oxygen clusters can be generated compared to single oxygen atoms, which can absorb and emit lower-energy (longer-wavelength) light. Furthermore, differences in TSI degree lead to the emergence of different HOMO-LUMO gaps from diverse oxygen clusters, thus exhibiting excitation-dependent emission characteristics. Meanwhile, the green RTP emission with a maximum emission peak at 500 nm and a lifetime of 89.17 ms was observed (
Figs. 2c and
d), which is comparable to some crystalline small molecules [
47,
48]. Similar to the steady-state PL spectra, the phosphorescence spectra also show excitation-dependent emission in the range of 462–500 nm at excitation wavelengths from 300 to 360 nm (
Figs. 2e and
f). This further confirms the existence of diverse oxygen clusters with different conjugation degrees. And the excitation-dependent emission provides an efficient method to realize multicolor fluorescence and RTP emission.