Explosive Detection by Aggregation-Induced Emission Materials With Non-Traditional Intrinsically Luminescent Moieties

The widespread use of nitro-explosives has posed a serious threat to public safety. Although traditional explosive detection methods such as gas chromatography coupled with mass spectrometry and ion mobility spectrometry are effective, they have limitations such as high-cost instruments and complex operation. Aggregation-induced emission (AIE) materials exhibit great potential in the field of explosive detection due to their unique luminescence quenching mechanism with explosives. Different from previous reviews on explosive detection by traditional AIE materials, this minireview focuses on recent research on explosive detection by AIE materials with non-traditional intrinsically luminescent (NTIL) moieties, including small molecules and polymers, which might cause inspiration in fields including explosive detection, AIE, and NTIL.