Manipulating the intramolecular motion of AIEgens for boosted biomedical applications

The research in the biomedical applications of aggregation? induced emission luminogens (AIEgens) has attracted increasing interest in recent years, as AIEgens have been widely accepted as promising materials for constructing new generation of phototheranostic agents [1-5]. Different from conventional organic dyes, the AIEgens often have threedimensional (3D) molecular structure and contain a number of intramolecular motion units [6-8]. In the aggregates, the 3D molecular structure results in significantly reduced intermolecular interaction such as π-π stacking as compared to planar structure.