Strong and broad near infrared (NIR) emission peaked at $855 nm upon optimal excitation at 342 nm has been observed from molecule-like silver clusters (MLSCs) confined in zeolite A assisted by thermal activation. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first observation of NIR emission peaked at longer than 800 nm from MLSCs confined in solid matrices. The decay time of the NIR emission is over 10 ls, which indicates that it is a spin-forbidden transition. The $855 nm NIR emission shows strong dependence on the silver loading concentration and the thermal activation temperature. V C 2014 AIP Publishing LLC. [http://dx.
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