To meet the world’s demands on the development of sunlight-powered renewable energy production, triplet–triplet annihilation-based photon upconversion (TTA–UC) has raised great expectations. However, an ideal highly efficient, low-power and in-air TTA–UC has not been achieved. Here, we report a novel self-assembly approach to achieve this, which enabled highly efficient TTA–UC even in the presence of oxygen. A newly developed lipophilic 9,10-diphenylanthracene-based emitter molecule functionalized with multiple hydrogen-bonding moieties spontaneously coassembled with a triplet sensitizer in organic media, showing efficient triplet sensitization and subsequent triplet energy migration among the preorganized chromophores. This supramolecular light-harvesting system shows a high UC quantum yield of 30% optimized at low excitation power in deaerated conditions. Significantly, the UC emission largely remains even in an air-saturated solution and this approach is facilely applicable to organogel and solid-film systems.

The potential of three-dimensional (3D) metal-halide perovskites to sensitize organic triplets is unveiled. Nanocrystals of surface-modified inorganic cesium lead halide perovskites (CsPbX₃, X = Br/I) are found to work as efficient triplet sensitizers for photon upconversion based on triplet–triplet annihilation (TTA-UC) at low excitation intensity.

This Feature Article reviews an emerging field of triplet energy migration-based photon upconversion (TEM-UC) that allows highly efficient photon upconversion at low excitation power.