Thanks to a temporary storage of optical energy at defects, persistent phosphors, i.e. transition metal- or rare earth- doped materials, feature unique long-lasting luminescence. Apart from their current industrial development as micro sized powders dispersed in polymers for design and night signalization, persistent phosphors rise interest for nanotechnologies as high-security-level labelling. However, their relatively low storage capacity combined to the difficulty to finely tune their properties hurdle their development. In this regard, processing persistent phosphors as low scattering coatings offers tremendous opportunities: in addition to facilitating energy storage, transparency allows playing with devised photonics architectures to unprecedently boost persistent properties.
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