Abstract
The features of well-conjugated and planar aromatic structures make π-conjugated luminescent materials suffer from aggregation caused quenching (ACQ) effect when used in solid or aggregated states, which greatly impedes their applications in optoelectronic devices and biological applications. Herein, we reduce the ACQ effect by demonstrating a facile and low cost method to co-assemble polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbon (PAH) chromophores and octafluoronaphthalene together. Significantly, the solid photoluminescence quantum yield (PLQYs) for the as-resulted four micro/nanococrystals are enhanced by 254%, 235%, 474 and 582%, respectively. Protection from hydrophilic polymer chains (P123 (PEO20-PPO70-PEO20)) endows the cocrystals with superb dispersibility in water. More importantly, profiting from the above-mentioned highly improved properties, nano-cocrystals present good biocompatibility and considerable cell imaging performance. This research provides a simple method to enhance the emission, biocompatibility and cellular permeability of common chromophores, which may open more avenues for the applications of originally non- or poor fluorescent PAHs.
Highlights
The features of well-conjugated and planar aromatic structures make π-conjugated luminescent materials suffer from aggregation caused quenching (ACQ) effect when used in solid or aggregated states, which greatly impedes their applications in optoelectronic devices and biological applications
We demonstrate a facile method (Fig. 1) to regularly co-assemble two different molecules into well-ordered aggregates[52,53,54], where weakly-fluorescent OFN is used as molecular barrier, Cor and Per were chosen as polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbon (PAH) chromophores, and P123 (poly(ethylene glycol) (PEO20–PPO70–PEO20))[55] is selected as a biocompatible surfactant to protect the micro/nanostructures from further growth in aqueous conditions
We have greatly improved the PLQYs of the micro/nanococrystals of Per/OFN MW, Cor/OFN MW, Per/OFN NP, and Cor/ OFN NR via such facile, low cost and efficient co-assembly method
Summary
The features of well-conjugated and planar aromatic structures make π-conjugated luminescent materials suffer from aggregation caused quenching (ACQ) effect when used in solid or aggregated states, which greatly impedes their applications in optoelectronic devices and biological applications. The features of planar aromatic structures of conventional organic chromophores, which facilitate the π–π stacking of the chromophores and other physical interactions (e.g., energy transfer, inter-, or intramolecular charge transfer, and excited states reactions)[16,17,18], further makes these materials suffer from the well-known aggregation caused quenching (ACQ) effect[4,5,6,7,19,20,21,22] Such ACQ effect has greatly impeded their practical applications in optoelectronic devices and biological applications[1,2,3,23]. Planar coronene and anthracene (Cor and Ant for short, with low-energy gaps and ACQ effect) exhibited enhanced PLQY39
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