Developing Aggregation-Induced Emission Vinyl Ether Polymers via Cationic Polymerization and Tacticity Regulation

Abstract

Aggregation-induced emission (AIE) polymeric materials have found widespread applications in a variety of domains.Accordingly, the development of new AIE polymers is undoubtedly of great significance to expand the diversity and application scope of AIE chemistry. In this study, we introduced a new class of AIE polymers based on vinyl ethers, which is enabled by cationic polymerization and the incorporation of a tetraphenylethylene (TPE)-functionalized viny ether monomer. Of note, TPE could keep intact under the cationic polymerization conditions. Further, a stereoselective cationic polymerization is also established by employing confined Brønsted acid mediation, thus affording a regulation on tacticity and accordingly AIE-active vinyl ether polymers with different and tunable thermal and mechanical properties can be obtained. Moreover, besides the desired characteristic AIE behavior, the resulting polymers also exhibit an excellent adhesiveness to polar surface like glass, even stronger than that of 502 Super Glue, and the AIE adhesion layer could maintain a good transparency of glass while become visible by its fluorescence emission under UV light (365 nm) for detection. We anticipate the vinyl ether polymers as a functional AIE-group carrier could find further application in the future.