Visualizing phase transition of upper critical solution temperature (UCST) polymers with AIE

• 作者: Yong-Guang Jia Kai-Feng Chen Meng Gao Sa Liu Jin Wang Xiaohui Chen Lin Wang Yunhua Chen Wenjing Song Huatang Zhang Li Ren Xiao-Xia Zhu Ben Zhong Tang
• 来源期刊: 中国科学：化学（英文版）
• 年，卷（期）: 2021,（3）
• 所属期刊栏目: COMMUNICATIONS
• 页码范围: 403-407
• 页数: 5页
• 语种: 英文

摘要

The stimuli-responsive polymers with upper critical solution temperatures (UCST) are highly attractive for drug delivery applications.However,the phase transition process of UCST polymer is usually characterized by turbidity measurement and electron microscopy,which are significantly restricted by low sensitivity and static observation.In contrary,the fluorescence technique has significant advantages in terms of high sensitivity,easy operation,and dynamic observation.However,the conventional fluorophores suffer from the drawbacks of aggregation-caused quenching (ACQ) after being encapsulated by UCST polymers,which are not suitable for direct visualization of the phase transition process.To tackle this challenge,we herein developed a series of UCST polymers based on polyacrylamides decorated with bile acid and aggregation-induced emission (AIE)-active tetraphenylethene (TPE) groups,which can be used for direct fluorescence monitoring of the phase transition process.Moreover,the AIE-active UCST polymers can serve as drug carriers,which can not only monitor the drug release process under thermal stimuli,but also verify the drug release by fluorescence recovery after thermal stimuli.It is expected that the AIE-active UCST polymers with self-monitoring ability are promising for biomedical applications.