Preparation and bioimaging applications of AIE dye cross-linked luminescent polymeric nanoparticles

With the ever increasing interest in biomedical applications of luminescent probes, the development of novel luminescent nanoparticles which showed high water dispersibility, strong luminescence and excellent biocompatibility has been extensively pursued. In this work, cross-linked luminescent polymeric nanoparticles based on aggregation induced emission (AIE) dyes were fabricated through combination of free radical polymerization and ring-opening reaction using AIE dye as the fluorogen and linker simultaneously. Our results demonstrated that these AIE dye based crossinked polymeric nanoparticles showed high water dispersibility, remarkable luminescent properties and excellent biocompatibility, is highly potential for biomedical applications.