New tetraphenylethylene-containing conjugated polymers: Facile synthesis, aggregation-induced emission enhanced characteristics and application as explosive chemsensors and PLEDs

In this paper, tetraphenylethylene (TPE) units, one of the typical aggregation-induced emission (AIE) moieties, are utilized to construct a new functional polyfluorene (PF) P1, which exhibited the exciting property of the aggregation-induced emission enhancement (AIEE), instead of the aggregation-caused quenching (ACQ) of normal PFs, and could probe the explosive with high sensitivity both in the nanoparticles and solid state. Three other TPE-containing polymers, P2–P4, were also successfully prepared, and demonstrated good performance as explosive chemosensors and light-emitting materials. P3, bearing carbazole as hole-transporting units showed the best performance with a maximum luminance efficiency of 1.17 cd/A and a maximum brightness of 3609 cd/m2 at 12.9 V in its light-emitting diode device.