Issue 4, 2020

Polymorph selectivity of an AIE luminogen under nano-confinement to visualize polymer microstructures

Abstract

Despite the huge progress of luminescent molecular assemblies over the past decade, it is still challenging to understand their confined behavior in semi-crystalline polymers for constrained space recognition. Here, we report a polymorphic luminogen with aggregation-induced emission (AIE), capable of selective growth in polymer amorphous and crystalline phases with distinct color. The polymorphic behaviors of the AIE luminogen embedded within the polymer network are dependent on the size of nano-confinement: a thermodynamically stable polymorph of the AIE luminogen with green emission is stabilized in the amorphous phase, while a metastable polymorph with yellow emission is confined in the crystalline phase. The information on polymer crystalline and amorphous phases is transformed into distinct fluorescence colors, allowing a single AIE luminogen as a fluorescent marker for visualization of polymer microstructures in terms of amorphous and crystalline phase distribution, quantitative polymer crystallinity measurement, and spatial morphological arrangement. Our findings demonstrate that confinement of the AIE luminogen in the polymer network can achieve free space recognition and also provide a correlation between microscopic morphologies and macroscopic optical signals. We envision that our strategy will inspire the development of other materials with spatial confinement to incorporate AIE luminogens for various applications.

Graphical abstract: Polymorph selectivity of an AIE luminogen under nano-confinement to visualize polymer microstructures

Supplementary files

Article information

Article type
Edge Article
Submitted
23 aug 2019
Accepted
22 nov 2019
First published
22 nov 2019
This article is Open Access

All publication charges for this article have been paid for by the Royal Society of Chemistry
Creative Commons BY license

Chem. Sci., 2020,11, 997-1005

Polymorph selectivity of an AIE luminogen under nano-confinement to visualize polymer microstructures

M. Khorloo, Y. Cheng, H. Zhang, M. Chen, H. H. Y. Sung, I. D. Williams, J. W. Y. Lam and B. Z. Tang, Chem. Sci., 2020, 11, 997 DOI: 10.1039/C9SC04239C

This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported Licence. You can use material from this article in other publications without requesting further permissions from the RSC, provided that the correct acknowledgement is given.

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