Aggregation-Induced Emission and Aggregation-Promoted Photo-oxidation in Thiophene-Substituted Tetraphenylethylene Derivative

Linna Zhu; Rui Wang; Luxi Tan; Xianfeng Liang; Cheng Zhong; Fei Wu

doi:10.1002/asia.201601003

Aggregation-Induced Emission and Aggregation-Promoted Photo-oxidation in Thiophene-Substituted Tetraphenylethylene Derivative

Chem Asian J. 2016 Oct 20;11(20):2932-2937. doi: 10.1002/asia.201601003. Epub 2016 Sep 13.

Authors

Linna Zhu¹, Rui Wang², Luxi Tan³, Xianfeng Liang⁴, Cheng Zhong⁵, Fei Wu⁶

Affiliations

¹ Chongqing Key Laboratory for Advanced Materials and Technologies of Clean Energy, Southwest University, Chongqing, 400715, P.R. China. lnzhu@swu.edu.cn.
² Chongqing Key Laboratory for Advanced Materials and Technologies of Clean Energy, Southwest University, Chongqing, 400715, P.R. China.
³ School of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering, Chongqing University, Chongqing, 401331, P.R. China.
⁴ Chongqing Institute of Green and Intelligent Technology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Chongqing, 400714, P. R. China.
⁵ Department of Chemistry, Hubei Key Lab on Organic and Polymeric Optoelectronic Materials, Wuhan University, Wuhan, 430072, P. R. China. zhongcheng@whu.edu.cn.
⁶ Chongqing Key Laboratory for Advanced Materials and Technologies of Clean Energy, Southwest University, Chongqing, 400715, P.R. China. feiwu610@swu.edu.cn.

PMID: 27541703
DOI: 10.1002/asia.201601003

Abstract

Aggregation-induced emission combined with aggregation-promoted photo-oxidation has been reported only in two works quite recently. In fact, this phenomenon is not commonly observed for AIE-active molecules. In this work, a new tetraphenylethylene derivative (TPE-4T) with aggregation-induced emission (AIE) and aggregation-promoted photo-oxidation was synthesized and investigated. The pristine TPE-4T film exhibits strong bluish-green emission, which turns to quite weak yellow emission after UV irradiation. Interestingly, after solvent treatment, the weakly fluorescent intermediate will become bright-yellow emitting. Moreover, the morphology of the TPE-4T film could be regulated by UV irradiation. The wettability of the TPE-4T microcrystalline surface is drastically changed from hydrophobic to hydrophilic. This work contributes a new member to the aggregation induced photo-oxidation family and enriches the photo-oxidation study of tetraphenylethylene derivatives.

Keywords: aggregation induced emission; aggregation promoted photocyclization; fluorescence; tetraphenylethylene; thiophene.