Boranil: A Reflection on a Decade of Advancement in Design, Synthesis, Photophysics to Applications

In the last decade, boranils have emerged as one of the mostcompetitive candidates among other boron-based dyes due to the ease of their synthesis and postfunctionalization. This review primarily focuses on rational molecular design concepts and postfunctionalization strategies, highlighting the structure-property relationships of boranils to fine-tune their photophysical properties, such as intramolecular charge transfer (ICT), aggregation-induced emission (AIE), circularly polarized luminescence (CPL), and solid-state emission. Overall, the past few decades have witnessed the gradual development of boranil from individual fluorescent molecules to functional building blocks, opening up a wide range of applications in material chemistry, biomedicine, and photocatalysis.