Self-Assembly of Highly Stable Zirconium(IV) Coordination Cages with Aggregation Induced Emission Molecular Rotors for Live-Cell Imaging

Abstract

The self-assembly of highly stable zirconium(IV)-based coordination cages with aggregation induced emission (AIE) molecular rotors for in vitro bio-imaging is reported. The two coordination cages, NUS-100 and NUS-101, are assembled from the highly stable trinuclear zirconium vertices and two flexible carboxyl-decorated tetraphenylethylene (TPE) spacers. Extensive experimental and theoretical results show that the emissive intensity of the coordination cages can be controlled by restricting the dynamics of AIE-active molecular rotors though multiple external stimuli. Because the two coordination cages have excellent chemical stability in aqueous solutions (pH stability: 2-10) and impressive AIE characteristics contributed by the molecular rotors, they can be employed as novel biological fluorescent probes for in vitro live-cell imaging.

Keywords: aggregation induced emission; coordination cages; live-cell imaging; molecular rotors; self-assembly.