Fluorescent Color Tuning of Conjugated Polymer Materials: Mechanisms and Methods

Abstract

Conjugated polymers have received ever-increasing attention as fluorescent materials. They have many advantages compared w ith small-molecular fluorescent materials. As materials,conjugated polymers can be fabricated into different forms,such as thin films by spinning coating or drop casting,nano-/microfibers by electrospinning,nano-/microspheres,and micelle / vesicle /microtubule / nanoparticles by self-assembly . The great flexibility of conjugated polymers in processing makes it possible for them to meet the demands of different applications. With regard to the photophysics,the broader absorption allow s conjugated polymers to be excited by different light sources. In addition,the high resistance to the photobleaching,or photostability,guarantees a long lifetime when conjugated polymers in real applications. These advantages allow conjugated polymers to be used in different fields,ranging from fluorescent bioimaging and sensors,to optical encoding and photoelectric displays. Some applications,such as encoding and display,require that the fluorescent materials have various emission colors. Thus fluorescent color tuning is very important and also very challenging for realization of these applications. This article gives some detailed discussion about the main mechanisms for the color tuning,based