Aggregation Induced Emission-Based Covalent Organic Frameworks for High-Performance Optical Wireless Communication

Here, we report the first utilization of covalent organic frameworks (COFs) in optical wireless communication (OWC) applications. In the solid form, aggregation-induced emission (AIE) luminogen often shows promising emissive characteristics that augment radiative decays and improve fluorescence. We have synthesized an <b>AIE-COF</b> through the Knoevenagel condensation reaction by taking advantage of the ability to carefully design and alter the COF structure by integrating an AIE luminogen with linear building blocks. The synthesized <b>AIE-COF</b> exhibited a high solid-state photoluminescence quantum yield (∼39%) and a short photoluminescence lifetime (∼1 ns), crucial for achieving modulation bandwidth for high-speed OWC applications. For comparison, we constructed an aggregation-caused quenching based COF, showing a similar lifetime but almost insignificant quantum yield. The orthogonal frequency-division multiplexing modulation strategy employed by the <b>AIE-COF</b> demonstrates remarkable high-rate data transmission, with a wide -3 dB modulation bandwidth of nearly 200 MHz and achieving high net data rates of 825 Mb/s, outperforming traditional materials. These results open new avenues for the ability to design and finetune new COF materials for their utilization as color converters in developing cutting-edge OWC components, enabling faster and more efficient data transfer.