Yalei Ma, Qiuping Wang, Jia Deng, Xudong Yan, Jing Liu, Liping Ding, Rong Miao*, Yu Fang. Macromol. Rapid Commun., 2024, 45, 2300592.

Bright and colorful fluorescent polymers are ideal materials for a variety of applications. Although polymers could be made fluorescent by physical doping or chemical binding of fluorescent units, it is a great challenge to get colorful and highly emissive polymers with a single fluorophore.

In this work, we report the development of a general and facile method to synthesize ultrabright and colorful polymers using a single twisted intramolecular charge transfer (TICT) probe. In the method, polymerizable and environmental sensitive TICT probes were designed and incorporated into acrylic polymers. Similar to the solution state, side chain of the polymer serves as solvent for the incorporated probe. Accordingly, fluorescence emission of the labeled polymers could be tuned by varying the structure of side chains and a series of colorful polymers were synthesized. Fluorescence emission of the polymers could be adjusted from blue to yellow (from 481 to 543 nm) by increasing side chain polarity, which could be realized either by choosing monomers with different functional group or by varying the composition of the copolymers. High fluorescence quantum yield and sensitive environmental response of the probes guaranteed low probe concentration (0.1 wt%) in the polymers. This avoids ACQ of the probe and avails high fluorescence brightness of the polymers in solid state. Meanwhile, undesired influence on the properties of the parent polymer can be ignored under low probe concentration. Simple synthesis and outstanding fluorescence properties endow the polymers wide application prospects, such as white LED bulb making, fingerprint identification, cultural relics protection, and encryption.

First Author: Ma Yalei, Master’s candidate, Shaanxi Normal University

Correspondence Author: Assoc. Prof. Miao Rong, Shaanxi Normal University

Full Text Link: https://doi.org/10.1002/marc.202300592