Organic Nanocrystals Based on a Solid-emission-tunable AIEgen for Cell Imaging

The development of fluorescent nanocrystals based on organic small molecules is of great importance in bioimaging due to the merits of easy modification, high brightness and excellent photostability, however suffering from the emission-detrimental aggregation-caused quenching(ACQ) effect. Herein, we successfully designed and synthesized an AIE-active di(N, N-dimethylaniline)-dibenzofulvene(named as NFTPE), which exhibits the crystallization-induced emission enhancement(CIEE) effect. Interestingly, two types of yellow- and orange-emissive crystals for NFTPE were obtained, exhibiting aggregation microenvironment-dependent emission tuning in the solid state. Single-crystal analysis and density functional theory(DFT) calculations reveal that different aggregation microenvironments result in the distinct molecular conformation for various emission. Excitingly, the crystallization of NFTPE in an aqueous solution under the assistance of amphiphilic PEG polymer matrices could be monitored in situ by the fluorescence changes, facilitating the preparation of NFTPE nanocrystals(NFTPE-NCs) by adjusting the aggregation microenvironment. The obtained NFTPE-NCs exhibit the superior performance in cell imaging in respect to high brightness, photostability, and biocompatibility, thus demonstrating the potential in bioimaging applications.