A water-soluble, AIE-active polyelectrolyte for conventional and fluorescence lifetime imaging of mouse neuroblastoma neuro-2A cells

Time-resolved emission microscopy of light-induced aggregation of luminescent polymers

Photon pressure has been used to induce the aggregation from solution of a series of photoluminescent conjugated polyelectrolytes containing tetraphenylethene units. These polymers show steady-state and time-resolved emission properties that are dependent on the local chromophore environment that can be influenced by the degree of intra- and inter-molecular interactions, which enables the photoaggregation process to be monitored by time-resolved fluorescence imaging techniques. Structural differences in the polymer lead to variations in the photo-induced aggregation behaviour.

Polymerization-Enhanced Two-Photon Photosensitization for Precise Photodynamic Therapy

Two-photon excited photodynamic therapy (2PE-PDT) has attracted great attention in recent years due to its great potential for deep-tissue and highly spatiotemporally precise cancer therapy. Photosensitizers (PSs) with high singlet oxygen (¹O₂) generation efficiency and large two-photon absorption (2PA) cross-sections are highly desirable, but the availability of such PSs is limited by challenges in molecular design. In this work, we report that the polymerization of small-molecule PSs with aggregation-induced emission (AIE) could yield conjugated polymer PSs with good brightness, high ¹O₂ generation efficiency, and large 2PA cross-sections. A pair of conjugated polymer PSs were designed and synthesized, and the corresponding AIE PS dots were prepared by nanoprecipitation, which exhibited outstanding 2PE-PDT performance in in vitro cancer cell ablation and in vivo zebrafish liver tumor treatment. Our work highlights a strategy to design highly efficient PSs for 2PE-PDT.

Photostable and biocompatible AIE-active conjugated polyelectrolytes for efficient heparin detection and specific lysosome labelling

A series of new conjugated polyelectrolytes (CPEs) with emissive tetraphenylethene-containing backbones and specific targeting pendants are synthesized and characterized.