Facile Construction of Dendritic Amphiphiles with Aggregation-Induced Emission Characteristics for Supramolecular Self-Assembly

Self-assembly of dendritic amphiphiles has attracted great attention due to their various applications in fundamental and practical areas. However, it still remains a great challenge to prepare dendritic amphiphiles with a facile protocol because of their complex molecular structures and tedious synthesis process. Herein, we develop a simple and straightforward strategy to construct dendritic amphiphiles with aggregation-induced emission characteristics by using tetraphenylethene derivatives as the bridge fragment. These dendritic amphiphiles can self-assemble into well-defined structures, and their supramolecular topological structures can be further transformed from spheres into other morphological structures, such as tubules and nanofibers, showing the diversiform self-assembly manipulated by the solvent effect. Furthermore, the supramolecular materials well performed as fluorescent photosensitizers for fluorescence image-guided photodynamic cancer therapy, ascribing to the high-performance fluorescence emission, good biocompatibility, and high electron donor-acceptor strength characteristics. This work provides a new way to construct functional dendritic amphiphiles and greatly broadens their applications in supramolecular chemistry and material science.

Automated summary

In this study, dendritic amphiphiles with aggregation-induced emission characteristics were successfully constructed using tetraphenylethene derivatives as the bridge fragment. The self-assembly of these dendritic amphiphiles into different morphological structures, such as tubules and nanofibers, was controlled by the solvent effect. Furthermore, these supramolecular materials exhibited excellent performance as fluorescent photosensitizers for fluorescence image-guided photodynamic cancer therapy.