Luminescent AIE Materials for High-Performance Sensing Applications

Luminescent materials have been widely applied in chemo-and bio-sensing applications because these luminescent materials offer high signal-to-background ratio, superior sensitivity and broad dynamic ranges in various detections. Conventional luminogens suffer from aggregation-caused quenching (ACQ) effect due to strong p-p stacking interaction upon aggregate formation of the luminogens with analytes. Such ACQ effect limits the scope of practical sensing applications. Luminogens with aggregation-induced emission (AIE) characteristics enjoy high emission efficiency in solid or aggregated state while they are non-emissive in solution. AIE luminogens (AIEgens) tackle the lethal problem of ACQ materials in the sensing applications. Siloles and tetraphenylethene (TPE) are archetypal AIE cores and possess advantages of facile synthesis and readily functionalization. AIEgens have been utilized to develop various fluorescent chemosensors. For example, hyperbranched AIE polymers with different topologies can be worked as turn-off explosive sensor with high sensitivity. The explosive detections can be done in solid film, which facilitates practical usage. The AIEgens can also be used as sensors for volatile organic compounds and metal ions through alternating fluorescence on/off mechanisms. Besides chemosensor, the AIEgens have been applied in the fields of biology. Water-soluble AIEgens have been developed for quantifying nucleic acids and proteins. They can serve as bioprobes for real-time monitoring and studying the kinetic of protein conformational changes, making them promising for diagnostic and therapeutic applications. These demonstrations significantly expand the scope of analysis applications of AIEgens and offer new strategies to the design of new fluorescent chemo-and bio-sensors.