Direct encapsulation of AIE-active dye with β cyclodextrin terminated polymers: Self-assembly and biological imaging

Aggregation-induced emission (AIE) phenomenon has attracted great attention recently and been extensively explored for biomedical applications. Nevertheless, the direct utilization of AIE-active dyes for biomedical applications has demonstrated to be enormous challenge owing to the hydrophobic nature of these AIE-active dyes. In this work, we reported the fabrication of amphiphilic AIE-active copolymers through the specific host-guest interaction between β cyclodextrin (β-CD) and an adamantine terminating tetraphenylethene derivative (TPE-Ad). In this construction system, β-CD was acted as the bridge to link TPE-Ad with PEG. The TPE-β-CD-PEG copolymers were characterized by various equipments in detail. Cytocompatibility and cell uptake behavior of TPE-β-CD-PEG were also examined to evaluate their biomedical application potential. Results demonstrated that TPE-β-CD-PEG copolymers were prone to self-assemble into luminescent nanoparticles, which exhibited high water dispersity, AIE feature and excellent biocompatibility. These features endowed TPE-β-CD-PEG great potential for biomedical applications.