Piperazine: a promising building block for aggregation-induced emission materials

Abstract

We report piperazine as a promising building block for the construction of aggregation-induced emission (AIE) materials by using its electron-donating ability and chair conformation. The piperazine derivatives can realize the suppression of twisted intramolecular charge transfer and nonradiative decay during aggregation and thus exhibit AIE features. PA-Py⁺ is successfully designed as a new AIE material for photodynamic therapy.