ARC Centre of Excellence in Exciton Science, School of Chemistry, Bio21 Institute, The University of Melbourne, Parkville, VIC 3010, Australia.
Department of Chemistry and Physics, La Trobe Institute for Molecular Science, La Trobe University, Melbourne, VIC 3086, Australia.
Chem Commun (Camb). 2020 Nov 26;56(94):14853-14856. doi: 10.1039/d0cc06411d.
Molecular rotors exhibit fluorescence enhancement in a confined environment and thus have been used extensively in biological imaging. However, many molecular rotors suffer from small Stokes shift and self-aggregation caused quenching. In this work, we have synthesised a series of red emissive molecular rotors based on cationic α-cyanostilbene. Profoundly enhanced aggregation-induced emission (AIE) properties and greatly widened Stokes shifts can be achieved by molecular engineering. With specificity to stain mitochondria, we demonstrate a simple approach to achieve cell uptake and retention upon tuning the pyridinium substituent of the dyes.
分子转子在受限环境中表现出荧光增强，因此在生物成像中得到了广泛应用。然而，许多分子转子存在斯托克斯位移小和自聚集导致的荧光猝灭等问题。在这项工作中，我们基于阳离子α-氰基二苯乙烯合成了一系列红色发射的分子转子。通过分子工程，可以显著增强聚集诱导发射（AIE）性质，并大大拓宽斯托克斯位移。我们还对这些染料的吡啶取代基进行了调谐，使其具有特异性地染线粒体的性质，从而展示了一种简单的方法来实现细胞摄取和保留。
