Structure, Assembly, and Function of (Latent)-Chiral AIEgens

The discovery of the photophysical phenomenon of aggregation-induced emission (AIE) by Tang in 2001 has drawn intense attention of scientists all over the world and created potential applications in various areas, such as biological probes, chemical sensors, and optoelectronic devices. Incorporation of AIE with chirality is a pioneering attempt to broaden the field of AIE research. Generally, chiral AIEgens are designed by attaching chiral units to an AIE-active building block. From another point of view, AIEgens with molecular rotors or vibrators are a kind of latent chiral molecule, whose chirality can be detected at a specific state by breaking the mirror symmetry. Aggregation as a bridge tethers molecular AIEgens and their macroscopic self-assembly. Through precise control of the chirality, well-defined helical architectures with amplified chiral signals are formed. In contrast to circularly-polarized luminescence at the molecular level, these aggregates with ordered packing always show enhanced performance in emission efficiency and dissymmetry factor.