Photostable and high-brightness aggregation-induced emission of iridium luminogen achieving reliable and sensitive continuous luminescent quantification of molecular oxygen

Qingsong Cao; Yang Xing; Ling Di; Zhanxu Yang; Xuebing Chen; Zhengqiang Xia; Jianghua Ling; Hongguo Wang

doi:10.1016/j.talanta.2023.125059

Photostable and high-brightness aggregation-induced emission of iridium luminogen achieving reliable and sensitive continuous luminescent quantification of molecular oxygen

Talanta. 2024 Jan 1;266(Pt 2):125059. doi: 10.1016/j.talanta.2023.125059. Epub 2023 Aug 9.

Authors

Qingsong Cao¹, Yang Xing², Ling Di³, Zhanxu Yang⁴, Xuebing Chen¹, Zhengqiang Xia⁵, Jianghua Ling¹, Hongguo Wang¹

Affiliations

¹ School of Petrochemical Engineering, Liaoning Petrochemical University, Fushun, 113001, China.
² School of Petrochemical Engineering, Liaoning Petrochemical University, Fushun, 113001, China. Electronic address: xingyang@lnpu.edu.cn.
³ School of Petrochemical Engineering, Liaoning Petrochemical University, Fushun, 113001, China. Electronic address: diling@lnpu.edu.cn.
⁴ School of Petrochemical Engineering, Liaoning Petrochemical University, Fushun, 113001, China. Electronic address: yangzhanxu@lnpu.edu.cn.
⁵ Key Laboratory of Synthetic and Natural Functional Molecule Chemistry of Ministry of Education, College of Chemistry and Materials Science, Northwest University, Xi'an, 710127, China. Electronic address: zqxia@nwu.edu.cn.

PMID: 37572477
DOI: 10.1016/j.talanta.2023.125059

Abstract

Online continuous luminescent oxygen quantification requires both high-brightness luminescence and superior photobleaching resistance of luminogens to afford the requisite level of sensitivity and operational stability, which remains a challenge. Herein, a fluorine-free design strategy of incremental rotors for preparing iridium luminogens with excellent photobleaching resistance and high-brightness aggregation-induced emission (AIE) is presented. The incremental rotors gradually improve the rotational activity of substituents, efficaciously activating the AIE with synchronously improved aggregation-state luminescence efficiency, which is theoretically confirmed by the variations of dipole moments and experimentally verified by the luminescent lifetimes. Moreover, the introduction of triphenylamine significantly improves the photobleaching resistance of iridium luminogens. Subsequently, by optimizing the loading capacity of the iridium luminogen, the improvement of high-brightness AIE on the oxygen sensitivity of ethocel films is successfully observed. Thickness attenuation of ethocel films dramatically shortens the quenching/recovery response to 4.7 s. Importantly, owing to the exceptional photobleaching resistance of the iridium luminogen, distinguished photo-fatigue resistance with operational stability is exhibited by the ethocel film with no luminescence attenuation during 8000 s continuous oxygen quantification.

Keywords: Aggregation-induced emission; Brightness; Iridium; Molecular oxygen; Photostability.