Citation: Yan Long, Wenbo Zhao, Qing Cao, Xiangyu Li, Fukui Li, Yanwei Hu, Shiyu Song, Kaikai Liu. Phosphorescent carbon nanodot inks for scalable and high-resolution invisible printing[J]. Acta Physico-Chimica Sinica, ;2026, 42(3): 100198. doi: 10.1016/j.actphy.2025.100198 shu

Phosphorescent carbon nanodot inks for scalable and high-resolution invisible printing

Henan Key Laboratory of Diamond Optoelectronic Materials and Devices, Key Laboratory of Material Physics, Ministry of Education, School of Physics, Zhengzhou University, Zhengzhou 450052, Henan Province, China

Corresponding author: Wenbo Zhao, Shiyu Song, Kaikai Liu,
Received Date: 3 August 2025
Revised Date: 24 September 2025
Accepted Date: 28 September 2025

Phosphorescent inks based on carbon nanodots (CNDs) offer an environmentally friendly and low-cost alternative for persistent visibility and time-delayed information retrieval. However, current matrix-dependent phosphorescent CNDs suffer from poor processability and limited substrate compatibility, hindering their application in scalable, high-resolution invisible printing. Here, we report water-soluble phosphorescent CND inks that enable high-resolution, environmentally stable, and invisible printing. The triplet excitons in CNDs are stabilized by spatial confinement during printing, resulting in bright and long-lived phosphorescence. The phosphorescent CND inks enable invisible yet high-fidelity printing of complex textual patterns with micrometer resolution (2480 × 3508 dpi, ~100 μm feature size), supporting font sizes down to 5 pt and line widths as thin as 0.05 pt across five types of paper substrates. The printed patterns exhibit over 98.7% accuracy across approximately 8.7 million pixels, demonstrating excellent fidelity. Based on these excellent invisible printing properties, a 200-page wordless book using phosphorescent CND inks was demonstrated. This work presents a scalable, low-cost, and high-resolution platform for phosphorescent ink printing, marking a significant advance in invisible printing technology.
- Carbon nanodots,
- Phosphorescent inks,
- Invisible printing,
- High-resolution,
- Scalable
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