Caged AIEgens: Multicolor and White Emission Triggered by Mechanical Activation
Name
Sun_JACS_2024.pdf
Description
Accepted version
Size
8.94 MB
Format
Adobe PDF
Checksum (MD5)
65398f4763434e573eb151616e157bb9
Author(s)
Sun, Yunyan
Wang, Kecheng
Huang, Xiao
Wei, Shixuan
Contreras, Enrique
Jain, Prashant K
Campos, Luis M
Kulik, Heather J
Moore, Jeffrey S
Date Issued
September 22, 2024
Journal
Journal of the American Chemical Society
Publisher
American Chemical Society
Citation
Sun, Yunyan, Wang, Kecheng, Huang, Xiao, Wei, Shixuan, Contreras, Enrique et al. 2024. "Caged AIEgens: Multicolor and White Emission Triggered by Mechanical Activation." Journal of the American Chemical Society, 146 (39).
Version
Author's final manuscript
Abstract
Aggregation-induced emission luminogens (AIEgens) that respond to mechanical force are increasingly used as force probes, memory devices, and advanced security systems. Most of the known mechanisms to modulate mechanoresponsive AIEgens have been based on changes in aggregation states, involving only physical alterations. Instances that employ covalent bond cleavage are still rare. We have developed a novel mechanochemical uncaging strategy to unveil AIEgens with diverse emission characteristics using engineered norborn-2-en-7-one (NEO) mechanophores. These NEO mechanophores were covalently integrated into polymer molecules and activated in both the solution and solid states. This activation resulted in highly tunable fluorescence upon immobilization through solidification or aggregation, producing blue, green, yellow, and orange-red emissions. By designing the caged and uncaged forms as donor-acceptor pairs for Förster resonance energy transfer (FRET), we achieved multicolor mechanofluorescence, effectively broadening the color spectrum to include white emission. Additionally, we computationally explored the electronic structures of activated NEOs, providing insights into the observed regiochemical effects of the substituents. This understanding, together with the novel luminogenic characteristics of the caged and activated species, provides a highly tunable reporter that traces progress with continuous color evolution. This advancement paves the way for future applications of mechanoresponsive materials in areas like damage detection and bioimaging.
MIT Department
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Chemistry
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Chemical Engineering
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Article is made available in accordance with the publisher's policy and may be subject to US copyright law. Please refer to the publisher's site for terms of use.
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DOI of Published Version
10.1021/jacs.4c09926
