Study for luminescence performance of three methyl xanthine derivatives

In this paper, the low-temperature phosphorescence (LTP), the low-temperature fluorescence (LTF), the paper substrate room-temperature phosphorescence (PS-RTP) and the room fluorescence (RTF) properties of caffeine (CF), theophylline (TP), and theobromine (TB) are investigated and compared, and some rules are found out: their maximal excitation wavelength and emission wavelength are in the range of 270-300 nm and 395-445 nm, respectively. And the PS-RTP characters of lifetime, polarization and quanta yield are also investigated and compared. It is found that their lifetimes of PS-RTP are all in the level of 0.1 s. They belong to long-life phosphorescence and their PS-RTP spectra are incompletely polarized.