Themed collection Aggregation-Induced Emission

Infectious diseases remain a major global health threat, with challenges such as delayed diagnosis and multidrug resistance.

Segregating and immobilizing chromophores using different strategies would lead to generation of organic room temperature phosphorescence.

Organophosphorus derivatives spanning coordination states from P(III) to P(V) provide a highly tunable platform for designing next-generation room-temperature phosphorescence (RTP) materials.

Photoswitchable molecules offer rapid response, reversibility, and fatigue resistance, with great potential in anti-counterfeiting, super-resolution imaging, optical storage, and sensing.

This Feature Article highlights recent advances of aggregation-induced emission (AIE) sonosensitizers for biomedical applications, providing new insights into the design of organic sonosensitizers and accelerating their clinical translation.

This review article covers the design and synthesis of macrocyclic compounds-based supramolecular systems and materials with aggregation-induced emission properties and broad application potentials.

3,4-Symmetric substituted MAI derivatives exhibit obvious asymmetric effects in the crystal form. This has little influence on the photoluminescent performance, but it exerts a certain impact on the electroluminescent performance.

This study developed an efficient color-tunable afterglow material through a co-doping and triplet-to-singlet Förster resonance energy transfer strategy, enabling applications in anti-counterfeiting and data encryption.

An effective strategy of improving water dispersibility through polyelectrolytes is proposed to enhance the photocatalytic H₂O₂ generation efficiencies of conjugated polymers.

Unprecedented control of single-strand, disordered, and ordered aggregate emission in substituted 9,10-dihydroanthracene polymers enables tunable photophysics.

Two new pure blue aggregation-induced delayed fluorescence luminogens are developed, and the effect of methyl substitution sites on the photoluminescence and electroluminescence behaviors is systematically evaluated.

Non-conjugated Au(I) complex C6 exhibits bright yellow room-temperature phosphorescence through aggregation-enhanced aurophilic interactions.

This work reports methylated tetraphenylethene derivatives exhibiting tunable emitting wavelengths among different temperatures due to the increased methylation-induced steric hindrance and reduced through-space conjugation (TSC).

Chain-engineered TPEs for bacteria eradication.

We report a finely engineered NIR AIE probe TTTVPHE with specific cell membrane-targeted imaging and excellent type I/II ROS generation capacity to monitor cell membrane morphology changes and achieve effective cancer phototherapy.

A room temperature nematic luminescent liquid crystal was employed as a C-FRET donor and yielded high performance CPL without photonic bandgap-caused energy loss.

An NIR-II type I photosensitizer with an aggregation-induced emission effect was developed to selectively stain the endoplasmic reticulum, which further triggered pyroptotic cell death under 635 nm laser irradiation.

Integrating eight-membered diazacyclooctatetraene-fused aza[5]helicene scaffolds with tailored charge-transfer yields AIE-active CP-TADF emitters exhibiting broad spectral tunability (555–842 nm) and strong chiroptical activity (|g_PL| ≈ 1.5 × 10⁻²).

Replacing one (NTP) or two (BDT) terminal benzenoid rings with thiophenes in ortho-carborane substituted anthracene analogues leads to marked changes in photoluminesence behaviour.

An aggregation induced emission (AIE) Ir(III) complex bearing a biotin-functionalized ligand, Ir-Bio, generates type I and type II reactive oxygen species and easily enters cancer cells where it has an excellent photodynamic therapy effect.

Systematic acceptor engineering in triphenylamine-based dyes achieves 2.5-fold enhanced photosensitization through aggregation-induced intersystem crossing mechanisms.

Developing efficient photosensitizers (PSs) with enhanced reactive oxygen species (ROS) generation capability in the aggregated state is essential for effective photodynamic therapy (PDT).

A cyano-functionalized π-bridge in DPP-TCBD nanoparticles enhances photothermal conversion efficiency (43%) and NIR-II fluorescence, providing a novel strategy for effective tumor photothermal therapy and imaging.

Several liquid crystalline polymer network films with bright long-lived circularly polarized luminescence have been fabricated, which exhibit luminescence dissymmetry factors up to −0.93, quantum yields up to 80% and lifetimes up to 763 ms.

Modification of p-phenylene-bridged bis(aminoborane)s, which function as organic–inorganic hybrid AIEgens, with terminal thienyl or phenyl moieties leads to significantly modified photophysical properties.

Regioselective functionalization of boron tropolonates, which consist of an even-electron/odd-atom π-system, results in selective control of molecular orbital energy.

Hierarchical changes in molecular motion during evaporative crystallization were studied based on excited-state dynamics of the AIE molecule, visualizing liquid-like clusters as nucleation precursors and providing insights into polymorph formation.

A NIR-II dye-displacement assay integrating a quinine-specific aptamer with a J-aggregating cyanine dye enables sensitive, selective detection and fluorescence imaging of quinine under physiological conditions.

Positional isomers drive the formation of emissive cage- and channel-type hydrogen-bonded organic frameworks with distinct single-crystal transformation behaviors.

We report a novel trident-like multi-cation photosensitizer (PS) with stabilized membrane camouflage for efficient tumor-targeted photodynamic therapy. Its rational design boosts ROS generation and overcomes PS leakage in biomimetic delivery systems.

Cationic tetraphenylethylene-based amphiphiles were developed as AIE-active membrane antennas for balanced ultraviolet to blue light conversion to enhance algal photosynthesis.

Two orange-red planar chiral thermally activated delayed fluorescence emitters exhibit aggregation-induced emission. Their organic light-emitting diodes and circularly polarized devices show low efficiency roll-offs and high dissymmetry factors.

The triptycene-fused MR-TADF emitter exhibits an EQE_max of 27.0% and low efficiency roll-off, advancing high-performance MR-TADF materials.

A calix[4]arene-derived AIE macrocycle (named T1) acted as an energy donor in artificial light-harvesting systems (LHSs). The T1-based LHS enabled photocatalytic cross-dehydrogenative coupling reactions.

The precise regulation of ΔE_ST and k_RISCvia protonation/deprotonation enables dynamic switching between TADF and RTP afterglow.

Based on interpretable graph neural networks, we have established a new efficient workflow for developing AIE materials.

A gold(I) complex with a phosphino-type ligand can simultaneously show AIE and high-contrast tricolored mechanofluorochromism for the first time, and its application in inkless writing information storage is developed.