Till now, many doped persistent luminescence (PersL) phosphors have been investigated and found various applications in such as bioimaging, photocatalysis and information storage, but introducing PersL emitters into a proper host is mostly complex. In this research, a self-activated PersL phosphor Ba2Zr2Si3O12(BZSO) is prepared by solid state reaction. By adding NH4Cl, the self-activated PersL intensity is evidently enhanced. The trap depths and concentrations are examined by thermoluminescence spectra. Meanwhile, Bi(3+)ions are introduced into BZSO and show wide band photoluminescence (PL) from 300 to 600 nm. Moreover, the PL of Bi(3+)is tunable under excitation by 265-350 nm lights. Furthermore, as a proof-of-concept design, we designed a patterned quick response (QR) code based on the self-activated PersL of BZSO, and the information of "South China University of Technology (SCUT)" can be read out by the code scanning technology. Bi3+-doped BZSO phosphors are suggested to provide potential applications in information storage by its self-activated PersL, and to excite researchers to study the tunable PL in Bi3+-doped phosphor.