Luminophore

A luminophore is an atom or functional group in a chemical compound that is responsible for its luminescent properties. Luminophores can be either organic or inorganic.

Luminophores can be further classified as fluorophores or phosphors, depending on the nature of the excited state responsible for the emission of photons. However, some luminophores cannot be classified as being exclusively fluorophores or phosphors. Examples include transition metal complexes such as tris(bipyridine)ruthenium(II) chloride, whose luminescence comes from an excited (nominally triplet) metal-to-ligand charge transfer (MLCT) state, which is not a true triplet-state in the strict sense of the definition; and colloidal quantum dots, whose emissive state does not have either a purely singlet or triplet spin.